A second review meeting on a project titled “Real time source apportionment study and pollution forecasting” was held by Delhi Pollution Control Committee and Environment department of Delhi Government  with the team from IIT Kanpur and other partner organizations.

To curb the increasing pollution of capital the project was approved by the Delhi Cabinet and the MoU was signed in October last year. A team of IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Delhi, The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), and IISER Mohali will execute the study in the national capital. Delhi Government’s Delhi Pollution Control Committee has been authorized to act as the nodal agency for executing the study with IIT Kanpur.

Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai said, “We are extremely glad that the IIT Kanpur study is progressing well on time despite the occasional disruptions caused by Covid-19. I congratulate the team at IIT Kanpur and DPCC for setting up good programme management mechanisms to ensure timely progress. We look forward to receiving the results of the study in the next few months and Delhi becoming the first city to have a real time source apportionment of air pollution”.

The “Real-time Source apportionment” project will help identify the factors responsible for the spike in air pollution at any spot in Delhi. It will help understand the real-time impact of various pollution sources like vehicles, dust, biomass burning, stubble burning, and emissions from industries. Based on the results obtained, the Delhi government will be able to take the necessary actions to curb the sources of pollution. This will go a long way in identifying the various factors contributing to Delhi’s pollution and addressing those factors.

“The availability of pollution forecasting on an hourly basis for the next 7 days will be extremely crucial for the government to take data-backed policy decisions around school closures, construction site ban, vehicular restrictions, among others. Currently due to the absence of a reliable forecasting system, we are bound to make decisions based on previous years’ experience rather than the future forecast”, said Reena Gupta, Advisor to Environment Minister.

The IIT Kanpur team also visited a few locations in Delhi to identify a suitable location for set-up of a supersite which is very critical for the study. Based on these options, the most suitable location will be made available by Delhi Government to them. TERI has also started the groundwork for creation of a 2022 emissions inventory which will be useful for pollution forecasting. This emissions inventory will be extremely advanced and have a fine spatial resolution of 500m x 500m (compared to the 2km x 2km resolution used by IITM for the SAFAR pollution forecasting).