Master of Science in Land Management and Geospatial Science
Ninety percent of land holdings in developing countries are not documented, administered, or protected. Therefore, land administration systems and practices do not cater to the complexity of land issues such as urban sprawl, overlapping land rights, land grabbing, women's land rights, land tenure insecurity, food insecurity, land use change, land conflicts, biodiversity conservation, and climate change.
Deriving solutions to these issues typically requires a combination of contextual insights, technical-methodological instruments, and communication skills to resolve conflicts and thereby accelerate land rights documentation, land tenure security, and sustainable land use. It requires responsible governance of land tenure and fit-for-purpose land information systems to document people-land relationships in a politically, legally, and socio-culturally sensitive manner. However, developing countries have a relatively narrow knowledge of land information systems, cadastral data, and land registration. Hence, there is a need to develop and implement new technologies and policies in developing countries, which would not be possible with conventional European knowledge and resources.
The purpose of the master’s program in Land Management and Geospatial Science (LMGS) is to educate land management professionals who can apply land and spatial-related concepts and tools to analyze international contemporary land issues and have the executive soft skills to carry out land administration functions to solve these land issues. The LMGS program combines two inter-connected scientific domains - Land Management and Geospatial Science. The connection of the two scientific domains is relevant to solving specific societal challenges such as land and property registration and management of rights and restrictions in land, water, and environment.
Graduates of the LMGS program are specialized generalists with a broad overview of land management and geospatial science topics and approaches. They work at the interface of politics and technology, applying existing land tools or designing new policies and interventions for documenting, administering, or protecting land tenure in specific socio-legal contexts. Their expertise is crucial in developing creative, innovative, and sustainable solutions to complex and contextual spatial problems. They also contribute their technical-methodological expertise to developing land and geospatial information systems that can capture, monitor, store, and query multi-dimensional information on land use, land tenure, and natural resource rights. Finally, they apply their interrelated geospatial, social, and legal skills to reconcile different and competing stakeholder interests in land.
You can find more information about the M.Sc. Land Management and Geospatial Science (LMGS) in our TUM LMGS Wiki.