Evaluating housing needs with the use of GIS

Rosario (Argentina) has different levels of housing quality and access to physical and social infrastructure. To assess the needs of newly decentralised districts, it is necessary to supply the municipality with new tools to analyse weaknesses and potentialities. The use of GIS can help in this evaluation. It can be implemented at the Public Housing Service to detect problem areas and improve the allocation of resources by efficiently targeting housing needs. Indicators are used to measure different levels of housing needs and provision of basic services. Spatial inequity related to the access to social infrastructure is calculated for the most disadvantaged groups. Expressed demand is also calculated and compared with the demand derived from the indicators. According to the evaluation it can be concluded that the city of Rosario is facing disparities inside the districts. The combined use of derived demand with expressed demand proves to be efficient to detect cases of housing needs where derived demand via indicators is showing lower levels of demand or hiding the situation completely. The growing demand of GIS tools and the availability of census data in digital format will improve and consolidate the evaluation of housing needs and its effect on spatial inequity.