Mapping & Listing of Urban Slums

Identifying Residents in Need of Services 

Evidence of the Importance of Mapping and Listing Urban Slums

Rapid urbanization is producing a growing landscape of poor urban settlements. New poverty clusters are continuously being formed and some of the older registered slums are expanding.

The Urban Health Initiative (UHI) found large variations between the District Urban Development Agency (DUDA) enlisted slums and the actual poverty settlements in the project cities. The UHI community volunteers used data from DUDA and triangulated the information with community level stakeholders, their own mapping and listing data of their catchment areas and data from GIS maps. During this exercise, it was found that the DUDA data had underestimated the actual number of slums by 21% to 46% as they had included only registered slums, and missed unregistered colonies / smaller pockets of the vulnerable population. The adjacent box shows the discrepancy in the data on number of slums in three of the UHI cities. The -updated data was used in the PIP to gain increased funding for program activities in the cities where UHI was operational. This enabled better allocation of community volunteers and resources for meeting the needs of the whole slum population.

Guidance on Improving the Urban Slum Population Database

Mapping of the unregistered slums and poverty clusters is overseen by the Urban Health Coordinator, while the listing of households is undertaken by the ASHAs with support from other front-line workers.

The district health authorities should use the slum and vulnerable urban population maps created to review the total resources needed, and request the necessary funds under the PIP.

The data should be shared with the District Health Society and other departments such as ICDS, National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM), Municipal Corporations, DUDA etc.

Roles and Responsibilities

Monitoring Progress in Creating an Accurate Database for Urban Health

The mapping and listing data should be updated on an annual basis. The following indicators should be monitored:

• Percentage of ASHAs who have visited all the households in their catchment area and updated their household lists over a period of three months
• Whether annual PIP requests are based on updated population data

Cost Elements 

The costs incurred in creating an updated database of the urban vulnerable population include the following. Though these costs are usually included in the PIP, however if these are not included then the following items should be planned and budgeted for in the PIP)

*Refer to ROP 2016-17, NHM-UP

This table is indicative and illustrates the manner in which cost elements are provisioned in a government PIP, thus giving guidance to the audience on where to look for elements related to a particular task, such as ‘Mapping and Listing’.

Sustainability

The ongoing update of household listing by the ASHAs will be sustained if the importance of this activity is emphasized upon in their initial training, the refreshers, the periodic review meetings and during the on-going supervision.

Since the required budget for supporting the updating of city maps is available or can be requested through the PIP, the mapping and listing exercise can be sustained if the CMHO/CDMO/CMO takes the initiative to issue a directive for this activity, annually or as needed.

Disclaimer: This document is based on the learnings collated from Urban Health Initiative, Health of the Urban Poor (supported by USAID) and Expanded Access and Quality (EAQ) to broaden method choice in Uttar Pradesh. This document is not prescriptive in nature but provides overall guidance of how this particular aspect was dealt with in these projects for possible adoption and adaptation. 

The downloadable versions of this document are slightly modified to make it state representative for Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, respectively.

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