A Decision Support System for Architects in the Rural Housing Situation in India

Even a conservative estimate of the rural housing short fall in India, is 20.6 million houses. There are three contexts under which external intervention is necessary, the endemic low housing quality of the poor and landless, the major development projects where displaced people have to be rehoused, and rehabilitation of victims of natural disasters such as the periodic floods or unprecedented earthquakes like the recent one in Maharashtra, Central India, where we successfully applied this method. Interventions by government agencies or charity organisations, have often failed to achieve a viable sustainable habitat, primarily because of misplaced perceptions in need assessment, resulting in disrupted societies. Tailored to the Indian rural housing scenario, the study developed a participatory interface to aid architects and planners in information gathering and systematization of need assessment for input into the designing and decision-making process. The method based on field tested participatory information collection games consists of three major stages. The first stage involves user-interactive documentation of the baseline data. The second, involves participatory group analysis and evaluation of issues coupled with rapid interactive verification of information collected in terms of spatial organisations and production mechanisms. The third is a tool for rapid systematised retrieval of information, for synthesis into preparation of an “user needs statement”