Aiming at addressing urban housing problems in a more efficient way, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation has developed an online management information system (MIS) on the housing and construction sector of the country covering all governmental and private constructions from local body level upwards.

Named the “Building related Information & Knowledge System” (BRIKS), the system developed by the National Buildings Organisation (NBO) under the Ministry will acquire the database from all relevant governmental organisations on construction activities.

Among the main aims of setting up the database is to better address the housing needs of the economically-weaker sections (EWS) and the lower income groups (LIG) in urban areas.

“By 2041, 50 per cent of the country’s population will live in urban areas, and after that the urban:poor ratio will only improve in favour of the former. In 607 major cities and towns of the country, 40.6 million people live in slums,” Ministry Secretary H S Anand said explaining why BRIKS had been developed.

The bilingual MIS in English and Hindi will be connected to all state government departments, Bureau of Economics and Statistics, municipal administrations, urban development bodies, municipal corporations, municipalities, and research and training institutions within the next 2-3 months, he said.

BRIKS will enable the NBO to set up National Data Centre and MIS on Urban Poverty, Slums, Housing, Building Construction and related urbanisation statistics under the plan scheme “Urban Statistics for HR and Assessments (USHA)” which was earlier launched on Monday by Minister of State for Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kumari Selja.

BRIKS will also allow NBO and all the users of the system to adopt holistic approach for evolving developmental schemes, continuous assessment of policies, research and training and capacity building, he said.