Housing, health and energy: a characterisation of risks and priorities across Delhi's diverse settlements

Abstract

Improved housing has the potential to advance health and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Research examining housing, health and energy use in low-income countries is limited; understanding these connections is vital to inform interventions for healthy sustainable human settlements. This paper investigates the low-income setting of Delhi, where rapid urbanisation, a varied climate, high pollution levels, and a wide variation in housing quality could result in significant energy use and health risks. Drawing on approaches from health and the built environment and existing data and literature, a characterisation of energy use and health risks for Delhi's housing stock is completed. Four broad settlement types were used to classify Delhi housing and energy use calculations and health risk assessment were performed for each variant. Energy use is estimated to be nearly two times higher per household among planned housing compared with other settlement types. Health risks, however, are found to be largest within informal slum settlements, with important contributions from heat and particulate matter across all settlements. This paper highlights intervention priorities and outlines the need for extensive further research, particularly through data gathering, to establish evidence to accelerate achieving healthy, sustainable and equitable housing in Delhi.

Keywords: Delhi; Housing; India; energy use; health risks; intervention priorities.

Figure 1. Overview of the methodology.

Figure 2

Examples of category 1: planned housing (top left), category 2: urban/rural villages (top right), category 3: unauthorised housing (bottom left), and category 4: JJ Clusters (bottom right).

Figure 3. Estimated kg CO₂ emissions per household by settlement type.

Figure 4. Comparison of electrical energy use estimates with other studies in literature in composite climate.