KSA National Land Evaluation — Ministry Data Requirements

What this register is

Every element in the study is either derivable from an open source or ministry-provided. This module lists the second set. The filter is src.data_source.origin = 'ministry' — there is no editorial judgement in what appears here.

Each entry states what is needed at item level, with the attributes required rather than only the dataset name, so a custodian can act on it without a further exchange. Each also states what it blocks, because a request without a consequence attached tends to sit.

SeverityCriticalHighMediumOptionalSeverity is set by what fails without the dataset, not by how hard it is to obtain.

MD-01Governorate boundaries and zoning schemesMOMAH3 itemsCritical▾

What is blocked without itAll zone generation, and therefore the entire area ledger. Zones are formed within a single governorate, so no zone can be drawn without the boundary layer. The governorate tier of res.area_ledger cannot be produced at all.

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Governorate boundary polygonsVector polygonOfficial code, name (EN and AR), parent province code, effective date. Approximately 130 features.

2Province boundary polygonsVector polygonOfficial code, name (EN and AR). 13 features. Required as the partition key on every observation and result table.

3Approved zoning and land-use designationsVector polygonDesignation class, approval reference, effective date, and whether agriculture is permitted, conditional or barred under each class.

The zoning classification itself is needed, not only the geometry — the E0–E3 assignment depends on knowing which designations permit cultivation.

MD-02Well register, monitoring network and abstraction licencesSWA6 itemsCritical▾

What is blocked without itThirteen of the fifteen water parameters. The water module cannot be populated at all. Without it every hectare in the Kingdom returns an unknown water state, and no development zone can be assessed for viability.

WP-A-01WP-A-02WP-A-03WP-B-01WP-B-03WP-C-01WP-C-02WP-C-03WP-C-04WP-C-05WP-D-01WP-D-02

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Well registerPointWell identifier, coordinates, total depth, screened aquifer, status (active, abandoned, sealed), licensed use.

2Water-level monitoring time seriesTabularWell identifier, observation date, static water level. A minimum of five years is needed to compute a trend in m/yr.

3Abstraction licencesTabularLicence holder class, licensed annual volume, basin, expiry.

4Water quality recordsTabularWell identifier, sampling date, ECw, SAR or the Na/Ca/Mg set, chloride, boron.

5Treated wastewater plantsPoint + tabularPlant location, treated volume, effluent tier against the national reuse standard, distribution area served.

6Distribution networkVector lineMain conveyance geometry, so conveyance distance can be measured rather than assumed.

Coordinates may be supplied in any national CRS provided the CRS is stated. Well identifiers must be stable across the four tabular sets so they can be joined.

MD-03Basin boundaries, sustainable yield and allocationMEWA5 itemsCritical▾

What is blocked without itBasin allocation elements, the conflicting-use check, and the eleven policy thresholds that no international source can supply.

WP-E-01WP-E-02EX

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Basin boundariesVector polygonBasin code and name, aquifer system.

2Sustainable yield determinationTabularPer basin, in Mm³/yr, with the basis and date of determination.

3Current allocationTabularPer basin, licensed volume against sustainable yield.

4Petroleum, mining, military and industrial designationsVector polygonDesignation type and issuing authority, for the EX check.

5Policy thresholdsTabular or written determinationAcceptable water-level decline rate, maximum viable pumping lift, allocation ceiling, minimum viable area per production system.

The policy thresholds are a determination, not a dataset. They can be supplied as a written statement rather than a file, but without them eleven water elements cannot be classified even once the measurements exist.

MD-04Cadastral recordsMinistry of Justice2 itemsHigh▾

What is blocked without itThe tenure check. Without it every hectare is recorded as E0 — unknown legal state, which is never promoted to clear.

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Parcel geometryVector polygonParcel identifier and boundary.

2Tenure statusTabularPer parcel: registered, disputed, under injunction, or unrecorded. Ownership identity is not required and is not requested.

Expected to require an MoU rather than a data request. If full parcel geometry cannot be released, a tenure status raster or a coverage mask would still allow the E-class to be assigned without disclosing any parcel detail.

MD-05Protected area polygonsNCW2 itemsHigh▾

What is blocked without itThe protected-area check. A legal determination that cannot be inferred from imagery at any resolution.

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Protected area boundariesVector polygonDesignation category, IUCN class where assigned, declaration reference and date.

2Buffer or transition zonesVector polygonWhere declared, with the restriction applying in each.

The permitted-use rule per category is needed alongside the geometry, since some categories permit managed agriculture and others do not.

MD-06Rangeland, forest and afforestation layerNCVC2 itemsHigh▾

What is blocked without itThe rangeland and forest check. A separate register from NCW — a hectare clear in one can be barred in the other.

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Rangeland boundariesVector polygonDesignation class, grazing regime, declaration reference.

2Forest and afforestation areasVector polygonClass and protection status.

MD-07Hazard and environmental constraint designationsNCEC1 itemHigh▾

What is blocked without itThe hazard check. A declared state rather than an observed one, so no remote-sensing substitute exists.

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Designated hazard areasVector polygonHazard type, severity class, restriction on development, declaration reference.

Custodian to be confirmed before the request is sent. Environmental, meteorological and geological hazard sit with different centres following the 2019 restructuring, and this request may need to be split between NCEC, NCM and SGS.

MD-08Hydrogeology and aquifer mappingSGS2 itemsMedium▾

What is blocked without itAquifer type, and the geological basis for several proxy-derived soil chemistry elements.

WP-B-02

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Aquifer extent and typeVector polygonRenewable, fossil or managed; saturated thickness where mapped.

2Lithological mappingVector polygonAt the finest published national scale. Used as the parent-material proxy for boron, carbonate and gypsum.

WHYMAP is the only external alternative and is a 1:25 M continental generalisation, which cannot be read at cell level.

MD-09Geodetic control and national base mappingGEOSA2 itemsMedium▾

What is blocked without itNot element-blocking, but every layer above is registered against it. Supplied without it, layers from different custodians may not align.

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Geodetic reference definitionWritten specificationThe national datum and its relationship to WGS 84, so all layers can be transformed to EPSG:4326 consistently.

2Administrative boundary referenceVector polygonThe authoritative version, where it differs from the MOMAH layer.

A discrepancy between the GEOSA and MOMAH boundary versions would need to be resolved before either is used as a partition key.

MD-10Station climate recordsNCM1 itemOptional▾

What is blocked without itNot blocking. ERA5-Land covers every climate element already. This request is a quality uplift, not a dependency.

LQ-C-02LQ-C-03LQ-C-04SQ-E-05

#ItemFormatRequired attributes

1Station observationsTabularStation identifier and coordinates; daily minimum, maximum and mean temperature; precipitation; where available, humidity, wind and radiation. Ten years minimum.

Would raise four elements from satellite_modelled (0.70) to ministry_record (0.95) on acquisition method, and would materially improve frost risk in the Asir and Al Bahah highlands where a 9 km reanalysis cannot resolve cold-air drainage.

What fails, and in what order

The register lists ten datasets. Their consequences are not equal, and they are not independent — two of them sit upstream of the study’s headline output and everything else waits behind them.

MD-01 MOMAHGovernorate boundaries block the area ledger. Zones form within a single governorate, so without the boundary layer no zone can be drawn. No zones means no res.zone_crop, no governorate tier in res.area_ledger, and no answer to the question the study exists to answer — how many hectares are ready, and where. Every other module can complete and the headline figure still cannot be produced.

MD-02 SWAThe well register blocks the entire water module. Thirteen of fifteen parameters have no external substitute. A cell with an unknown water state cannot be classified W0–W4, and because the four modules are answered independently and never averaged, an unknown water answer cannot be covered by a good capability answer. Development viability is unanswerable for every hectare in the Kingdom.

MD-03 MEWAPolicy thresholds block classification, not measurement. Eleven water parameters could be measured and still not classified, because what counts as an acceptable decline rate or a viable pumping lift is a policy determination. This is the one request where the answer may be a written statement rather than a file.

MD-04 to MD-07The four legal registers block the land-rights module but not each other. They are separate registers held by separate authorities, so they can be pursued in parallel and each one delivered narrows the unknown area independently. Until all four arrive, every hectare carries E0 — unknown, which is never promoted to clear.

Two requests would unblock most of the study on their own. MD-01 and MD-02 together account for fourteen of the twenty-five blocked elements, the whole of the water module and the whole of the zoning pipeline. If sequencing is needed rather than a single submission, those two go first and everything else can follow at its own pace.

One request is not on the critical path and is marked accordingly. MD-10 NCM station records improves four climate elements from 0.70 to 0.95 on acquisition method, but ERA5-Land already covers all four. It is a quality uplift and should not compete for attention with the two above.

How data should be delivered

Stated once here rather than repeated against every item. These are requirements the database imposes, not preferences — a layer arriving without them needs a further exchange before it can be loaded.

Delivery requirements

Coordinate reference systemAny national CRS is acceptable provided it is stated explicitly. Data will be transformed to EPSG:4326 for storage; UTM 37N and 38N are used for area and gradient operations.

FormatVector as shapefile, GeoPackage or file geodatabase. Tabular as CSV or XLSX with a stated encoding. Rasters as GeoTIFF with the CRS embedded.

Attribute languageEnglish or Arabic. Where both exist, both are preferred — the database carries name_en and name_ar on every reference entity.

CurrencyThe vintage or effective date of each layer is required. A layer without a date cannot be given an obs_date, and the confidence model treats an undated source as lower quality.

CompletenessPartial national coverage is acceptable and useful. Gaps should be identified rather than filled, so that missing area is recorded as unknown rather than assumed clear.

Update cycleWhere a layer is periodically revised, the revision cycle is needed so the database can schedule refresh rather than treat the delivery as permanent.

What is deliberately not requested

Ownership identity. The tenure check needs to know whether a parcel is registered, disputed, under injunction or unrecorded. It does not need to know who holds it, and personal or corporate identity is not requested in any item.

Anything already derivable. Soil properties, terrain, climate and surface water are obtained from open global sources and do not appear here. Requesting them would slow the exchange and imply a dependency that does not exist.

Complete national coverage as a precondition. Partial coverage is useful and is preferred over waiting. A gap identified is recorded as unknown; a gap concealed becomes an assumption, and the confidence model has no way to detect the difference.

Status

None of the ten has been requested. Every entry stands at acquisition_status = 'not_started'. This module is the specification of the request, not a record of one — the status field exists so that it becomes a tracker once the first submission is made.