Drones speed up delivery of title deeds

BANGKOK: Satellites and drones are driving efforts by Indian states to map informal settlements to speed up the delivery of services and land titles.

The eastern state of Odisha aims to give titles to 200 000 households in urban slums and those on the outskirts of cities by the end of the year.

Officials used drones to map the settlements. “What may have taken us years to do, we have done in a few months,” G Mathi Vathanan, the state housing department commissioner, said yesterday.

Land records across the country date back to the British colonial era, and most holdings have uncertain ownership, leading to fraud and lengthy disputes that often end in court.

Officials in Mumbai, where about 60% of the population lives in informal settlements, are also mapping slums with drones. Maharashtra state, where the city is located, is launching a similar exercise for rural land holdings.

In the southern city of Bengaluru, satellite imaging and machine learning were used in a recently concluded seven-year study that recorded about 2 000 informal settlements there, far more than the 600 in government records.

“Understanding human settlement patterns in rapidly urbanising cities is important because of the stress on civic resources and public utilities,” said Nikhil Kaza, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, who analysed the Bengaluru data. “Geospatial analysis can identify stress zones and allow civic authorities to focus efforts in localised areas.”

About 65 million people live in India’s slums, according to census data, which activists say is a low estimate. Lack of data can result in tenure insecurity, as only residents of “notified” slums – those formally recognised – can receive property titles.

“Lack of information on the nature and diversity of informal settlements is an important limitation in developing appropriate policies aimed at improving the lives of the urban poor,” said Anirudh Krishna, a professor at Duke University who led the Bengaluru study.

About a third of the world’s urban population lives in informal settlements, according to UN data – Reuters