Scot-LAND

Annual Ground Rent assessment at the core of a free, public, open land information system for Scotland.

Scot-LAND is a professional, SLRG-aligned platform that estimates Annual Ground Rent (the rental value of land alone, excluding buildings and improvements) for every location in Scotland. It transforms complex valuation logic into a free public resource for education, research, policy analysis, and journalism.

The platform is permanently free for everyone to view, explore, and download (where licenses allow), designed to help the public understand both who holds land and what the land is worth under Georgist principles.

Live Site: https://www.scot-land.scot

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🌟 The Platform Ecosystem

The repository powers a multi-layered information system:

1. The AGR Engine (Valuation Core)

The analytical heart of the project. It provides residual site-value estimates and Annual Ground Rent calculations on a 3×3 m What3Words grid, ensuring that land rent is treated as a location-based value.

2. The National Wealth Engine (Aggregation Core)

A spatial aggregation system that sums three distinct forms of economic rent to show the "Total Wealth" of a location:

• Surface Rent: Derived from the la-calc model using socio-economic proxies.
• Resource Rent: Spatial intersection of Oil, Wind, and Marine assets.
• Ecological Rent: Spatial intersection of Carbon, Peat, and Woodland assets.
• Wealth Inspector: A frontend tool that provides a transparent "Wealth Stack" breakdown for any selected point.

3. Open Land & Ownership Layers (Expanding)

Expanding the platform into a broader land information system by integrating:

• Cadastral Data: ROS INSPIRE registered extents.
• Public Holdings: Indicative local-authority, Crown, and public-body land registers.
• Vacant & Derelict Land: SVDLS and OGL survey sites.
• Transparency: Clear visibility of data gaps (e.g., Sasine land or private owner names) rather than hiding them.

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🛠 Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Next.js 16, MapLibre GL JS, Tailwind CSS
Backend	Python FastAPI, Pydantic
Data/Spatial	PostgreSQL + PostGIS (National Wealth Engine)
Valuation	SLRG-aligned residual method (Wightman $\rightarrow$ Pickard $\rightarrow$ Sandilands)
Grid	What3Words 3 m grid (via W3W_API_KEY)

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Backend Setup

The backend handles the valuation engine and the National Wealth Engine (via PostGIS).

cd backend
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements.txt

Database Requirement: The National Wealth Engine requires a PostgreSQL database with the PostGIS extension installed. Ensure your connection strings are configured in your environment.

Initial Data Build:

# Build baseline valuation data (HPI, Boundaries)
python -m etl.build_processed
python -m etl.build_boundaries
python -m etl.build_wards

Run API:

uvicorn api.main:app --reload --app-dir .

• API Base: http://127.0.0.1:8000 | Docs: http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs

2. Frontend Setup

cd frontend
npm install
$env:NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8000"
npm run dev

• App: http://localhost:3000

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🌐 API Reference

National Wealth Engine

Endpoint	Method	Description
/georgist/wealth	GET	Wealth Inspector. Sums Surface, Resource, and Eco rents for a point.
/layers/georgist/surface-rent	GET	Surface rent layer based on la-calc (Data Zone proxies).
/layers/georgist/resource-rent	GET	GeoJSON of resource polygons.
/layers/georgist/eco-rent	GET	GeoJSON of ecological polygons.
/sync/ros	POST	Syncs the wealth engine with Registers of Scotland open data.

Core AGR & Spatial Tools

Endpoint	Method	Description
/square	GET	AGR for a point / W3W cell.
/assessment/report	GET	Professional assessment pack (JSON/Markdown).
/layers/w3w-grid	GET	Viewport W3W cells with AGR.
/layers/parcels/at	GET	Cadastral parcel polygon under a point (ROS INSPIRE).
/fiscal/summary	GET	National fiscal dashboard (Tax basket vs AGR).

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📈 Professional Data Stance

Scot-LAND adheres to a strict professional standard to ensure all research is defensible and legal.

• Allowed: UK HPI, ROS open/licensed products, postcodes.io, documented rebuild tables.
• Forbidden: No scraping of property portals (Zoopla, Rightmove, ESPC, etc.).
• Integrity: Research estimates are never presented as official statutory tax bills or VOA valuations. Every estimate carries methodology notes and uncertainty indicators.

🏛 Intellectual Foundation

The platform implements the lineage of Georgist land value theory: Adam Smith $\rightarrow$ David Ricardo $\rightarrow$ Henry George $\rightarrow$ Mason Gaffney $\rightarrow$ Fred Harrison $\rightarrow$ Roger Sandilands $\rightarrow$ Andy Wightman (Residual) $\rightarrow$ Duncan Pickard (Economic Rent).

🚢 Deployment & Hosting

The public site is hosted on a local machine and published via a Cloudflare Tunnel:

• Public URL: https://www.scot-land.scot / https://scot-land.scot
• Environment: Docker Compose (docker-compose.home.yml) serves the app on port 3000.
• Safe deploy: scripts/ops/deploy-home.ps1 builds images first, health-checks a canary, then swaps; never stops cloudflared. See docs/HOME_DEPLOY.md.
• Uptime: free local probe every 5 minutes (scripts/ops/uptime-check.ps1 / .sh) — no paid vendor.
• Note: Vercel and Railway were used for earlier split deploys and are not the current public host.