SBC Trust Fund Project MaS-SHIP: Mainstreaming sustainable social housing in India

The project aims to enable the mainstreaming of sustainable construction practices in social housing in urban India. The primary focus of the project is to enhance sustainability in the construction of social housing through adoption of suitable construction as well as operations & management practices. The primary objectives of the project are to: 1. Facilitate sustainability in social housing projects through the adoption of sustainable building materials and construction technologies by social housing providers (such as government bodies, private developers, building material manufacturers, architects). 2. Develop a policy framework for sustainable social housing with a focus on operational energy use, judicious use of material and natural resources in construction, financial practices promoting sustainability and socio-economic considerations. The project, during its course, seeks to establish systems for promotion and acceptance of more sustainable decision-making in social housing provision through awareness generation and knowledge dissemination through outreach products, workshops, stakeholder dialogues and roundtable discussion. Completed Activities: 1.1 – 1.4 Appointment of advisory group and technical reviewers 1.5 Project website 5.1 – 5.3 Finalisation of pilot project locations and partners 2.1 – 2.4 Background study on scenario of social housing in India/Internationally (Technical Report 1) Underway: 1.5 Newsletters 3.1 Establishing the basis of selection of parameters To be undertaken: 3.2 – 3.2 Finalisation of attributes of parameters of sustainability 3.3 Technical Report 2: Finalised attributes of parameters of sustainability 4.1 – 4.2 Database building for developing Sustainability Index 4.3 Technical Report 3: Data collection and synthesis 5.5 Assigning weightages to the attributes of the parameters 6.1 – 6.2 Testing, validation and refinement of the Sustainability Index and tool 6.3 Technical Report 4: Multi-Criteria Decision Making in the Sustainability Index 5.7 – 5.8 Workshops 6.4 – 6.5 Testing the Sustainability Index through pilot projects 6.6 Technical Report 5: Sustainability Index and its validation 6.7 Development of web-based Decision Support Tool 7.1 Development of three policy briefs for policy-makers and practitioners 1.8 Interim report at end of year 1 1.10 Final report at end of year 2 Dissemination: 2.1 – 2.4 Technical Report 1: Gap analysis of Social housing The outputs of the project include the following: 1. Decision Support Tool (DST) for designers, developers and consultants, which lays down the fundamentals and methodology for planning, implementation and operation practices, necessary for achieving sustainability in housing projects and developments. The tool is envisaged to be interactive, informative and web-based manual, seeking to provide customized advice to the users. The tool would be based on extensive literature review and surveys with stakeholders with respect to existing social housing scenario, and the possible gaps with reference to sustainability i.e., environmental (resource and energy efficiency), social (access, culturally sensitive, livelihoods etc.) and economic (financial inclusion, affordable). Based on these parameters, a Sustainability Index (core part of DST) will be developed (using Macros in Excel and then refined to be web-based) based on a multi-criteria decision support system, to provide designers, developers and consultants with evidence based performance information that would aid decision making in their choice of building materials and construction technologies. 2. Policy/practice briefings for policy-makers and practitioners based on the key findings of the study with respect to mechanisms for mainstreaming sustainability (environmental, social and economic) aspects in affordable urban housing at national and sub-national levels. 3. Technical Reports based on synthesis of primary and secondary data and results from stakeholder consultations. To keep up-to-date with the project, please visit http://www.mainstreamingsustainablehousing.org Video on stakeholder engagements: https://vimeo.com/219753566 (other videos in links below)