Surveying and mapping city slums with GIS tech

Ashoka Fellow Pratima Joshi, founder of Shelter Associates (SA), is using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to survey and map city slums, generating critical information to advocate for the provision of essential public services to slum inhabitants in India. SA began to conduct settlement level and census household surveys and to map and analyze data showing the location of houses and other community resources. The data enables detailed analysis of slum communities, which helps governments to better prioritize sanitation and housing, and allocate alternate land for flood-affected people. Prior to GIS, most local governments had no clue about the number of people displaced or the exact number eligible for resettlement. Communities are benefiting from the data; slums in Sangli demanded that more than 500 individual toilets be built, and slums in Pune effectively negotiated for efficient electricity distribution. SA plans to continue using GIS to remedy governments’ lack of data about the urban poor.

About 40 percent of India’s urban population lives in slums and lacks the most basic civic infrastructure, such as housing, water, sewage systems and electricity. With GIS, Pratima has created a spatially-organized slum database that is critical to effective urban planning and the development of public infrastructure servicing the slums. She uses information to advocate for the poor and put pressure on public officials to, negotiate government budgets, coordinate city plans, and design utilities beneficial to slum inhabitants. As women in slums started reading and understanding the maps, they demanded improved sanitation and environmental hygiene, which has resulted in better health. Overall, the GIS technology has resulted in better information, which has led to the replacement of assumptions with precise figures and plans, increased transparency and accountability of public officials, and more equitable and efficient urban planning.

Pratima has transformed city planning in several urban areas in India from an apathetic, unplanned and inadequate approach to one that is integrated and cost-efficient for all of its citizens. SA’s process has enabled development of effective solutions to sanitation problems and has resulted in a valuable data source for other interventions aimed at pro-poor service delivery that may be taken up by the local government in future. Pratima’s model has emerged as an effective solution for ensuring improved service delivery for the poor, and aligns itself with the Government of India’s urban reform linked program. Today, SA’s GIS data is the basis on which decisions regarding slums are taken. Pratima’s model, done primarily in Pune and Sangli, may now be replicated in cities across India.

Picture credit: taken from the Shelter Associates website.