A Decision Support System for an Architect Working in a Rural Housing Situation in India

This paper presents an approach to addressing the problem of rural housing shortage in India. Three contexts require external intervention: low housing quality of the poor and landless; rehousing of displaced people due to development projects; rehabilitation of victims of natural disasters. Interventions are often unsuccessful because of erroneous needs assessment. This study presents a participatory method to enable architects and planners to gather and analyse information to assist decision-making. The method is based on participatory information collection games, user-documentation of baseline data, participatory group analysis and evaluation of issues, and a tool for rapid information retrieval to prepare a 'user needs statement'.