China Land Surveying and Planning Institute – CLSPI

Established in 1987 for the benefit of the public, the China Land Surveying and Planning Institute (CLSPI) is a comprehensive public institution under the Ministry of Natural Resources. Its main duty is to provide knowledge-based support for decision-making and technical guarantees for land and resource management. This promotes reform and innovation of sustainable land use and management and land science and technology. CLSPI has a series of licensed Class A qualifications at national level, in Land Property Assessment, Land Use Planning and Surveying and Mapping. Additionally, the National Remote Sensing Center has set up its land branch in the institution while the Ministry of Natural Resources has formed a key laboratory for land use research also within the institution. The institution’s talent pool is made up of 185 technical experts out of whom more than 80% are researchers and professional technicians. More than 50% have a master’s /doctor’s degree or advanced academic and professional titles While more than 25% have senior academic and professional titles. The mission of the institution covers all areas of land management including surveying, monitoring, and evaluation of land and resources, land (territory) use planning, property rights and cadastral management, land market and land price monitoring, land remote sensing, land information engineering, land-related science and technology, land institutions and policies, technical standards formulation in land management. It also takes a leading role in conducting various cooperation and academic exchanges on land management and land science and technology in China and abroad. Over the past 30 years since its establishment, CLSPI has completed over 2,000 research projects and technical tasks of various kinds with achievements covering all academic and professional fields of land management. Among them, over 200 achievements won awards and prizes at national and ministry (bureau) level for leading research and cutting-edge progress in land science and technology. The institution’s great contributions to academic research on land science and technology have enabled the cultivation of new disciplines on land and the development of a talent pool. It has the most authentic, comprehensive, authoritative and prime materials and data on land resources in China and has already formed a 400TB basic database for national land and resources. Based on the thinking of "strengthening communication and embracing an open way of operation”, it sponsors the Chinese core academic journal titled China Land Science and operates the open website of land and resources data and urban land price monitoring data. In order to build an open and shared high-end innovation platform, it has established collaborative relations with 33 provincial-level surveying and planning institutes and more than 30 academic research agencies and universities nation-wide. Together with these partners, 12 scientific research bases and one research center have been jointly built in various locations in China, forming a research network on land policy research and innovation on land science and technology throughout China. In addition, it has conducted several research programs in cooperation with more than 30 national and international organizations like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNFAO, UNESCO and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The institution has stepped up efforts for breakthrough development in major issues of land science and key technologies following the ideas of innovation, promotion, cooperation and development. It has also accomplished several state and ministry-level technical and engineering projects successfully, thus providing all-around support in policy making and scientific and technical service on land management. In conclusion, CLSPI’s sound organizational structure and operational mechanism, abundance of talented and active researchers and professionals and a favorable software and hardware environment have laid a solid foundation for its continuous growth.