Aubrey Barker Grants

Established in 1972, the Aubrey Barker Fund is dedicated to enhancing sustainable survey and land management skills in developing countries through professional education and capacity building for the lasting benefit of local communities.

The Fund works to support the development of necessary survey and land management skills, and to ensure that they are available in all nations and communities; alongside encouraging and facilitating the sharing of these skills and knowledge with communities so that we increase our collective capacity to manage our key asset: our land.

Land is central to our lives – as individuals, as communities and as nations. We cannot generally increase the amount of land on our planet, so it is absolutely essential that we manage it wisely, for ourselves and for future generations. To do this, we need to consider issues including effective development management, protection and improvement of habitats, pollution control, replenishment, security of title and certainty of occupier rights. All of this requires skilled individuals and informed communities who understand the social, economic and environmental importance of land.

The Fund was set up in memory of Aubrey Barker, a distinguished surveyor from Guyana who was president-designate of The Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE) but died before taking office. The Trustees of the Fund – individuals with expertise in this field from around the world – seek to share his passion through grants and through establishing continuing networks which share good practice in sustainable survey and land management. We aim to make long-lasting impacts in communities, in nations and across nations through spreading awareness, capability and capacity.

Factors against which we will assess applications for grants, and the overall success of our work, are:

• Impact on the community and locality
• Impact on the profession, and on developing a core of competent estate managers
• Impact on education (teaching the teachers leads to teaching of students)

• ‘Spreading the word’ about good estate management and about ABF
• Spreading good practice

The grants schemes available are summarised below. Please note that, with the exception of the Aubrey Barker Fund/FIG Foundation Course Development Grants, applications are welcomed at any time and should be made on the relevant application form. There may be a period of up to 3 months between application and decision. Small grant applications may be dealt with more quickly.

Please note that it is a condition of any ABF grant that the recipient will be required to produce a report on the award. The nature of reporting required will be specified at the time that the grant is awarded as a condition of the grant.

Further details as to what will and will not be funded are given below with links to the relevant application form. Criteria for assessment will be supplied with the application form

If you are considering making an application and are not sure whether you are eligible please contact us at:  enquiries@aubreybarkergrants.org.uk

Aubrey Barker Fund/FIG Foundation Course Development Grant

Grants of up to 20, 000 Euro over two years are available, normally every other year, with the objective of developing the capacity of academic institutions which teach surveying in developing countries by making teaching more effective and improving their curriculum.

The next round of applications will not be before April 2021 and will be announced here or/and on the FIG Foundation website.

‘Training the trainer’ grants

In addition to the ABF/FIG grants, applications can be made by academics, individually, or at a Departmental level, for small grants for development of curriculum or teaching materials which will benefit a group or groups of students. These could take the form of, for example, short study leave to design and develop a new module within the discipline or to convert an existing module to become an effective on-line learning offer. The key requirement is that the applicant can demonstrate that the development will enhance the individual or department’s capabilities and will be of lasting benefit to a number of students. As with other grants, the beneficiaries should be in a developing country, regardless of the geographical location of the applicants, although preference will be given to academics who are resident in such a country. The maximum grant will normally be three thousand pounds sterling  (£3,000).

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Bursaries

These awards take several forms: assistance towards a course of study, specific project work or attendance/presentation at a conference.

Help towards tuition fees
These grants are intended to help an intending student from a developing country to take advantage of a course of study which otherwise he or she would not be able to afford. Preference will be given to those whom the committee judge to be the most likely to benefit, to contribute to his/her home community and whose need appears to be the greatest.

Each application is considered on its individual merits. Grants are normally a contribution towards the applicant’s tuition fee. The value of a grant for any one year will normally be one thousand pounds sterling (£1,000), subject to a maximum total of three thousand pounds sterling (£3,000) for any one student. Applications may be made directly to the Fund by either a student or by a higher education institution. In the case of the latter, the grant will be made for the benefit of a named individual(s). Normally only one grant per annum will be awarded in respect of any one institution, although up to three applications may be submitted by an institution for consideration.

In order to qualify for an award, the intending student must be a national of a developing country and normally resident in the continent of his/her home country, and accepted by the named institution for enrolment on an appropriate and relevant academic course of study which can be at Undergraduate, Masters or Doctorate level.

The amount and duration of the grant will be decided by the Board, often in staged payments. In the case of staged payments, each payment will be dependent on satisfactory progress. Upon completion of any grant, a final report is required.

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Project grant
Any student from developing countries studying for a qualification may apply for a grant to assist with a project which is a required part of his/her course.

The grant may cover equipment not available from the College or University, or field work costs (travel and subsistence), up to a maximum of one thousand pounds sterling (£1,000). Project grants are normally awarded to those studying at the Masters level or above.  Applications must be accompanied by full details of the project and costings.  Any equipment provided will become the property of the College/University.

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Support for Conference Attendance and Presentation
Student organisations from developing countries may apply to The Aubrey Barker Fund for support for student meetings or conference attendance or to make conference presentations.

Applications should be channelled through the organisation managing the conference and there should be a clear indication of the value of attendance to the student(s) concerned. The Fund will not normally consider requests from individuals for support to travel to a conference. Applications should include details of the meeting for which support is needed, a justification, and a cost breakdown of how the money would be spent. The maximum to be awarded will be one thousand pounds (£1,000).

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A blended learning course design in Fit for Purposes’ Cadastral Survey

The Aubrey Barker Foundation in collaboration with FIG Foundation Grant will provide a grant of twenty thousand pounds sterling  (£20,000), spread over two years, to this project to be run by Dr Trias Aditya (pictured below) from the Department of Geodetic Engineering of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Indonesia.

Background to the project

This project is set in Indonesia, the home of millions of land parcels spreading across numerous populated islands, both big and small islands, many of which have not been mapped and registered by the country. Under the current legal and institutional framework, systematic land titling activities from village to village are expensive and take a long time to complete. Land titling activities are impossible without a complete cadastral map and active participation from communities and government officers.

The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) has published principles and guidelines to give a way forward to accelerate the land registration progress, called Fit for Purposes Land Administration (FFP-LA).

What is required is a paradigm shift from a top-down traditional cadastral survey and mapping into a bottom-up modern cadastral survey for accelerated land registration. This is currently lacking. To effect the changes requires a combination of modern survey techniques and community participation applying FFP-LA principles in order to accelerate and assure the quality of the land registration

Short description of the project

The project will develop a learning platform applying blended learning practices (a combination of online courses and field visit interactions) in FFP Cadastral Survey (FFP-CS) for both in-house students and para surveyors (i.e. local representatives in the community) across the country. The project will develop course objectives, student outcomes and teaching materials of FFP-CS adhering to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) standards. An online assessment and certification system involving the Project Team’s University, National Land Agency and The Association of Surveyors will also be developed in the project. This blended learning program will produce an excellent capstone design for ABET curriculum and will speed up the community readiness for FFP-CS implementation.

Development of an integrated automatic image registration scheme

Oluibukun Ajayi (pictured above) reports on his PhD project:

The Aubrey Barker project grant was awarded for the successful completion of my project which is part of a doctorate degree in Surveying and Geoinformatics at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria in May 2018. The title of the funded research is ‘Development of an integrated automatic image registration scheme’ and it is aimed at developing an integrated model for the automatic registration of overlapping images captured from a drone with a view to optimising the process of fitting images to existing maps.

The grant was spent on field work which consisted of hiring of equipment, such as the DGPS receivers used for the establishment of Ground Control Points (GCPs) and the Check Points (CPs), hiring of the Phantom 4 drone used for the image data acquisition, hiring of a project vehicle, payment of site allowances for field/research assistants, beaconing of GCPs and CPs and marking them with reflective materials.

Three different methods of describing features were integrated with epipolar correlation in the development of an optimised automatic image registration scheme. The developed algorithms were implemented using JAVA scripts and tested using the drone images in two different registration campaigns. Degraded images with poor spatial resolution and a small size were used for the first campaign while images with excellent resolution, but of large size, were used for the second campaign.

In the course of this research, a novel integrated automatic image registration algorithm based on epipolar correlation was developed which proved to be more robust (with respect to speed and accuracy) than the automatic image registration algorithms that are based on selected conventional feature descriptors. The novel registration algorithm integrates both the geometric and epipolar constraints which makes it more robust in terms of accuracy and speed (processing time).

Finally, an automatic image registration software which contains a stereo comparator and a module for automatic camera calibration was developed for easy implementation of the developed algorithms. The developed registration scheme will be of particular interest to the military, cartographers, radiologists, digital photogrammetrists and remote sensing experts as a tool for educational, training and industrial applications.

Trustees

• Mr Iain Greenway (Chair – 2022)
• Professor Ian Dowman BSc PhD FRICS (Secretary)
• Mr Anthony Chase FRICS
• Mr R E H Hayward BSc (Est. Man), FRICS
• Mr C R Little BA (Hons) DipLS
• Mr E B D Waldy, MPhil, FRICS
• Ms Kate Fairlie , MSc BEng (Hons)
• Dr Ainoriza Mohd Aini, B (Est. Man), MSc, PhD

Past Trustees

• Professor Sarah Sayce BSc PhD FRICS IRRV (Chair)
• Mr Michael Newey DSc (Hon) BSc FRICS FCIH FRSA MAHI

Please contact us at: enquiries@aubreybarkergrants.org.uk

Iain Greenway trained as a land surveyor and worked in the three Ordnance Surveys in the British Isles, becoming the last Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland. His subsequent roles in the Northern Ireland Civil Service have included as Director of Road Safety, and he is currently Director of Historic Environment. He is an Honorary Member of FIG (the International Federation of Surveyors), having served as Vice President 2009-2012. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors (CICES), treasurer of a junior football club, and Trustee of a trust providing leisure services in North Down.

Ian Dowman is Emeritus Professor in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing at University College London (UCL). He was President of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)  from 2004 to 2008. He has represented ISPRS at international organisations such as UN and ICSU and has organised workshops and meetings internationally, particularly in Africa and South America. He now edits Geomatics World.

Tony Chase is a Chartered Surveyor and a Partner in property consultants Gerald Eve LLP.  He is a long-standing member of the firm’s Professional Standards Panel, with responsibilities which have ranged from professional practice and compliance to anti-money laundering, and has many years’ experience of working voluntarily in charitable and not-for-profit organisations, including acting as Chair and Trustee of a local charitable group and Chair of Governors of a public sector school.

Richard Hayward is a chartered valuation surveyor who has combined his own private practice with work as an academic and authorship.  He retired as a Principal Lecturer, having been responsible for running undergraduate and postgraduate Estate Management courses at South Bank and East London Universities. In practice, his professional experience has been wide-ranging, but for many years he has specialised in statutory compensation, planning and compulsory purchase. He is the author The Handbook of Land Compensation (published by Sweet and Maxwell), which attempts to be definitive on its subject, and is editor and co-author of Valuation: Principles into Practice.

Chris Little‘s industrial experience includes many years as a land surveyor working in the UK and overseas, involving topographic surveys, building surveys and setting out; and eight years’ technical/software support and running training courses for Sokkia Ltd. For the last 14 years he has been the director of a training consultancy, running surveys and setting out courses for the surveying and construction industries. He also has many years’ experience in the charity sector in his village, including acting as the chairman of one charity for over 10 years.

Brian Waldy is a chartered surveyor, with extensive experience in the UK and international consultancy. A qualified investment analyst, he is a former Chair of the Society of Property Researchers (SPR). In relation to registered charities, he is a former Chairman of the Aubrey Barker Fund, the RICS Foundation and the RICS Education Trust and a former Trustee of the Friends of the Commonwealth. Brian is the current Chair of Survey Review. He was the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE) for 11 years and is now their Commonwealth liaison. He is a former Chairman of FIG Commission 9 (valuation and the management of real estate) and a former Visiting Professor at City University.  

Kate Fairlie is a land administration specialist with Land Equity International. She has worked extensively with the UN, World Bank and donor governments in the fields of surveying and land administration, and is a former Chair of the FIG Young Surveyors Network. Kate has some 15 years of experience in land administration and related fields, including particular expertise across the land dimensions of sustainable urban development, conservation and climate change, technology and youth.

Ainoriza Aini is currently the Head of Department of Real Estate at the Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. Trained as a valuer, Dr Ainoriza moved into academia in 2004 where she taught both undergraduate and postgraduate programs and has led numerous real estate research projects. Outside of academia, she has acted as a consultant for private developers and government agencies.  She has also been appointed as a field expert in government research and policymaking.  She is an Executive Board Member for the Asean Valuers Association (AVA) and a member of The Royal Institutions of Surveyors, Malaysia.