Union Ministry Launches Amplifi 2.0 Portal for Access to Urban Data

• 04 Dec 2023

Recently, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs introduced the Amplifi 2.0 (Assessment and Monitoring Platform for Liveable, Inclusive, and Future-ready urban India) portal, offering raw data from Indian cities on a single platform for academics, researchers, and stakeholders, facilitating data-driven policy-making.

Key points

• Urban Local Bodies Involvement: Currently, 225 urban local bodies (ULBs) are on-boarded, and data for 150 cities is accessible on the portal.
• Data Maturity Challenge: Cities' lack of data maturity resulted in only 150 ULBs sharing their data initially. The Ministry sent data quality parameters to improve data sharing.
• Future Expansion: The goal is to eventually include data from over 4,000 Urban Local Bodies on the portal.
• Diverse Data Categories: The website presents diverse data for various cities, covering aspects like diesel consumption, water quality testing, healthcare expenditure, slum population, and road accident fatalities.
• Indices-Based Ranking: The Ministry previously used ULB-provided data for ranking cities based on four indices: Ease of Living Index, Municipal Performance Index, Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework, and Data Maturity Assessment Framework.
• Subset Reports: The government plans to release different reports focusing on subsets of the four indices.
• Shift in Focus: The Urban Outcomes Framework 2022, developed by the National Institute of Urban Affairs and Ernst and Young, shifts focus from indices to data, providing a comprehensive list of indicators across 14 sectors.
• Opportunity for New Frameworks: The initiative opens avenues for creating new frameworks based on open data, covering sectors such as demography, economy, education, energy, environment, finance, governance, health, housing, mobility, planning, safety and security, solid waste management, and water and sanitation.
• Projected Urban Population: By 2030, 60 crore (40%) of the population is projected to live in urban areas, compared to 37.7 crore (31%) in 2011.
• Economic Contribution: Urban India contributed 63% to the country's GDP in 2011, projected to increase to 75% by 2030, according to the 2011 Census.