Integrated Geospatial Information for Sustainable Land Development in Tirana-Durres Area in Albania
Nami Seimiya, Akihiro Sugita, Keiji Yamada, Bhuwneshwar Prasad Sah, Lorenc Cala
Along with start of Albanian democratization in 1991, rural-urban migration resulted into rapid
growth of urban population coupled with unplanned urbanization creating severe pressure on
infrastructure and environment. In Balkan and Eastern Europe regions, the Government of
Japan (GOJ) through Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) supported number of
counties, including Albania, to improve their social infrastructure and environmental condition,
in accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 (UN, 2015) and
European Union (EU) standards, which may help them to achieve their ambition to join EU.
JICA supported the Government of Albania (GOA) with ODA loan/grant for "Greater Tirana
Sewerage System Improvement Project (2008-2014)" and Technical Assistance (TA) for "The
Project for Tirana Thematic Urban Planning (2011-2012)" recognized as the substantial
contribution in this direction, but continuation of unregulated urbanization created Tirana-
Durres urban sprawl.
To address this issue, GOA created the National General Plan for Territory in 2016 with
envision of sector-by-sector development plan, including land management registers
preparation for implementing infrastructure. However, required basic large-scale (1/2,000)
topographic maps had not been updated since the 1980s. In addition, recently established State
Authority for Geospatial Information (ASIG) mandated to conduct geospatial information
related services, needs to improve the capacity in terms of human resource, equipment and
technology. Based on the technical cooperation request from GOA to GOJ, "Project on
Geospatial Information for Sustainable Land Development in Tirana-Durres Area" consisting
of digital topographic mapping and capacity building of ASIG for utilization, maintenance and
updating ability, has been implemented since June 2017 and is planned to be completed by the
end of June 2020. JICA Project Team (JPT), in close collaboration with ASIG, analyzed,
defined and adapted all required, but plausible geospatial information specifications to meet the
INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) standards, and Albanian standard
of planar positional 40cm accuracy. Under the supervision of JPT, ASIG staff have been
creating digital topographic maps of 20 km2, out of 300km2 of whole project area, as a part of
capacity building, and remaining 280 km2 is taken care by JPT. In addition, to introduce recent
technologies, necessary training sessions have been conducted in both Albania and Japan. It is
expected that ASIG will undertake similar mapping work to expand the coverage of the digital
topographic map by themselves after the completion of the project.
Event: FIG e-Working Week 2021
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