The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) along with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has launched India’s first web repository documenting air quality studies done in the last 60 years.
The Indian Air quality Interactive Repository (IndAIR) has archived approximately 700 scanned materials from pre-Internet era (1950-1999), 1,215 research articles, 170 reports and case studies and 100 cases, to provide the history of air pollution research and legislation. Such a repository on air pollution is one of the first in the world.
Rakesh Kumar, director NEERI, said at the release on Wednesday: “Though air pollution is one of the most widely deliberated issues, little is known about it in India as far as the statistics or the history is concerned. The general belief has been that not much is being done to tackle the problem. We began IndAIR with the intent to document important milestones in the country and make them available to the public. We hope that this will help the academicians understand the issue better and also enable policy makers to frame legislation that encourages development.”
He said it took 22 people and 11 months to give shape to IndAIR.
Nidhi Khare, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, said: “The government has taken a number of initiatives to combat air pollution. However, the need of the hour is the collective effort of policy makers, regulators, scientists/academicians and most importantly public participation to control the episodes of high air pollution.”
