Network database design for conflict and post-conflict Land Tenure Information Systems (LTIS)

The paper presents the Talking Titler Network (TTN) database design, for conflict and post-conflict land records. In conflict and post-conflict situations, the constellation of interests from displaced persons, witnesses, and people who currently occupy the land that displaced persons once owned are often difficult to unravel, and conventional land record data models are often restricted in the type and scope of data to handle these complex situations. One solution is a database design that can capture multiple, overlapping and layered tenure relationships in a changing environment that are too complex for the relational data model to handle. The Triple Store graph database development system and its ontology languages were used to design and develop the TTN prototype. The authors’ observations from the Gaza Strip, an ongoing conflict situation, and Somaliland, a post-conflict situation, were used as illustrative contexts. The test results show that graph database flexibly captured, described, and automatically revealed tenure patterns. TTN simplified the complexity of tenure relationships among objects by organizing them into sets of connected triples, revealing tenure relationships, and visualizing tenure information as a graph network, and as a table. The design shows promise in capturing complex, contested tenure relationships.