The Establishing of Geospatial Database for Agricultural Lands of Islamic WAQF in Iraq: Case Study Babil Province

Abstract

In numerous countries, one of the most significant pieces of background records is a religious endowment that usually called (WAQF), which have a cultural, and economic value. For instance, in Iraq, religious endowments comprise a large number of dispersed real estates and lands usually required effective administration methods. Agricultural lands that belonged to religious endowments lack of sufficient systems, which are combined statistical and spatial information in terms of spatial monitoring and informatics updating such as ownership and existing condition. Recently, geospatial techniques such as GIS showed a feasibility in the management of information belonged to lands management. Therefore, in this study we proposed a method based on GIS technology for the management of lands of Islamic endowments in Babil province, Iraq. The proposed methodology included the integration between field works using GPS equipment and Geospatial database. The developed database is considered as the first geodatabase related to the agricultural lands of the religious endowment in Iraq included almost all coordinates and specific details for each piece of agricultural lands that owned by the endowment. Furthermore, the output geodatabase is a flexible database included various features like query, search, and statistical computation.