The Delhi Cabinet on Friday approved a real-time source apportionment study with an aim to curb air pollution in the city. The project aims to identify sources of pollution on a real-time basis to initiate mitigation measures on a near real-time basis.
Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai said the project would go a long way in identifying the various factors contributing to Delhi’s pollution and mitigating them.
Identifying factors
“The real-time source apportionment project will help identify the factors responsible for the spike in air pollution at any particular 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, the Delhi government will take necessary actions to curb the sources of pollution,” Mr. Rai said.
The study will be conducted by a team from IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Delhi, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and IISER-Mohali. The government said that the technology to carry out real-time source apportionment of pollution has not been implemented in any other city in the country.
Mukesh Sharma, Scientist at IIT-Kanpur, leading the study said that the project will provide daily and weekly forecasting of air quality, real-time diurnal source apportionment and suggest short-term daily and weekly actions to systematically assess, reduce and prevent air quality deterioration in Delhi for many years to come.
“The developed mobile laboratory will provide apportionment of the sources at multiple locations and this laboratory will be perhaps the first of its kind in the world,” Dr. Sharma said.
