CM Kejriwal launches mechanism to collect real-time Delhi pollution data

New Delhi [India], January 30 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday launched a supersite with "state-of-the-art" air analysers and a mobile air quality monitoring system for a real-time "source apportionment study" to identify the sources of air pollution in Delhi.
The supersite is situated in Delhi's Rouse Avenue, within the Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya premises.
The study on real-time source apportionment will assist in determining the causes of the rise in air pollution at any specific location in Delhi. The project has been initiated by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi and TERI.
While inaugurating it, CM Kejriwal said, "The state government has been very serious and sincere in dealing with the problem of air pollution in Delhi. Electric Vehicles Policy, steps to increase the DTC busses fleet, electric busses, Tree Transplantation Policy, increased forest cover of Delhi, Graded Response Action plan, campaigns like Red Light on Gadi Off and the planned mechanized sweeping of Roads, were maintained by the government."
"But analysing and verifying the data related to air pollution was difficult for the government therefore the government have been reliant on studies that have been conducted as a one-off analysis. The issue with such an approach is that we plan the policy to curb pollution throughout the year based on the data from June. The pollution data changes on a daily basis and this does not get factored into such policy-making," CM said.
"The launch of the supersite is one of the most important aspects of Delhi's campaign to combat pollution. It is also one of the most crucial elements covered in the Winter Action Plan. Based on the data, this supersite will also assist in forecasting air pollution levels," he said.
He also said that the component on 'Secondary Inorganic Aerosols' shows this data. Over the last three months, this component has mostly been constant. The data also shows that biomass burning is high during the last three months from November. This is due to burning wood and other biomass.
He further said, "Today we will be launching one such van, but once this stabilizes and the data from this van comes in, we will launch several other such vans that can provide us data from the different wards of Delhi. We will also use these vans to study the source of pollution in hotspot areas and once the data comes in, it will tell us about the main source of pollution and then we will take action on the data. There will be a supersite on the second floor of this building, there will also be a mobile air quality monitoring system, there is also a forecasting system and a dashboard and a portal to provide this information."
"The implementing agencies are DPCC, which is the owner agency; IIT-Kanpur is in charge of lead measurement of data and IIT-Delhi is in charge of forecasting for the upcoming days and TERI provides the emission inventory. I want to congratulate everyone who has worked on this project and created the first such monitoring system in the entire country" CM said.
As much as 35 per cent of the pollution was caused by sources outside of Delhi. Biomass burning was responsible for 26 per cent of the pollution; vehicles were responsible for 35 per cent of the pollution. At 9 am today, around 29 per cent of the pollution was caused by sources outside of Delhi. This is how interesting this system is to monitor the sources of pollution, the CM said.
On this occasion, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai said, "Earlier, the pollution-related data analysis used to take two to four months. But now with the help of the super site, they will be able to find out every hour the contribution of various sources to pollution. Forecasting has been greatly strengthened through this initiative."
"With the help of this, experts will be able to decide what can be done within the next three days to reduce pollution. Apart from the Supersite, there is a mobile lab which will do the apportionment every hour. The mobile lab can be taken anywhere to see the actual pollution situation there. There is a website for this, where all the data will be collected. That data will be analysed and the source of pollution will be identified," Rai added.
On this occasion, the Delhi government also launched a website that will act as a dashboard for all pollution-related data and forecasting under the Real-Time Source Apportionment Study. Mobile Air Quality Monitoring Station will be sent to various areas of Delhi and will give an idea of pollution sources in each corner of Delhi.