Inaugurating a supersite and Mobile Air Quality Monitoring Station at SBV Rouse Avenue to identify pollution sources on a real time basis, Delhi
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the city government will now be able to know the pollution caused by vehicles, industries, and biomass burning in any area in the national capital.
On the occasion, the Delhi Chief Minister said, “Now in Delhi, we will be able to determine pollution sources on an hourly basis and also forecast hourly data for the next three days. With this, we will be able to know the pollution caused by vehicles, industries, and biomass burning in any area and will get help in fighting it.”
He said the real-time pollution analysis shows that outer-state pollution accounts for one-third of Delhi’s pollution, while biomass accounts for one-fourth and vehicles account for 17-18 per cent.
Kejriwal said the Delhi government launched the EV Policy to reduce pollution, bought thousands of new e-buses, increased green cover to 23.6 per cent, and ran the ‘Red Light On Gaadi Off’ campaign.
The Real Time Source Apportionment aims to assess the contribution of vehicles, construction dust, biomass burning etc on an continuous or real time basis (hourly). It will also help in supplementing the existing network of monitors to give even more granular information about hotspots of pollution from different areas of Delhi.
The project has been started by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee in collaboration with IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi, and TERI. Through a
presentation, the IIT team gave detailed information about the work of supersite and mobile station of real time source apportionment study.
The team informed that earlier they used to take samples and analyse them to find out the source of pollution at any place. The analysis used to take two to four months. But now with the help of the supersite, they will be able to find out every hour the contribution of various sources to pollution.
Kejriwal added that it has always been difficult for any organisation or state government to analyse and verify the data related to air pollution.
“Until now, we have been reliant on studies that have been conducted as a one-off analysis.”As we have seen here today, the reasons for pollution change on an hourly basis. The major source of pollution at 8 am yesterday was different from that at 9 am. The key reason for pollution on Monday may differ from the key reason on Tuesday,” he said.
“Until we do not calculate the source of the pollution on a real-time basis, we cannot have an effective policy on the issue. So, therefore this time we have got IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kanpur, DPCC, TERI to work together to get us the Real-Time Source Apportionment. With this we will know the reasons for the source of pollution in the air quality of Delhi at the very moment,” he added.
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.
Sharing information about the project, Kejriwal tweeted, “In Delhi, we are now identifying air pollution sources on a real-time basis. Today we launched its super-site and a mobile station for AQ monitoring. With the help of this, now we will be able to identify what is causing the pollution in the air at a given time so that necessary steps can be taken for it.”
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