The Maasai of southern Kenya domain model of land use

Karamesouti M., Schultz C., Chipofya M., Jan S., Eduardo Murcia Galeano C., Schwering A., Timm C.

Abstract

We present a domain model that formalises the human-land relations in the Maasai nomadic pastoralist society in Kenya, referred to as MSKDM, and its integration with the prominent Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). Our long-term aim is to facilitate a land administration system that can accurately capture and express salient Maasai concepts of land use, ownership, communal tenure, and to assist in transparency during land transactions. We use an extensive corpus of existing research literature, and input from our own on-site workshops, as source material for our domain model. We use real sketch maps drawn by Maasai community members that we collected during our field studies for validation, and to demonstrate how our model can be operationalised.