Delhi CM inaugurates facility to identify pollution sources in real time
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday inaugurated a Super Site and Mobile Air Quality Monitoring Station at SBV Rouse Avenue to identify pollution sources on a real time basis.
"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 on the occasion.
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, said Kejriwal, adding that 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 Super Sight, 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 a.m. yesterday was different from that at 9 a.m. 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.