Safar begins drive to list, study pollution sources
Over 100 students will gather data in the drive that will end by August
NEWDELHI: In a bid to ensure more accurate forecast about Delhi’s air pollution, which takes alarming proportions in winter months, Safar — India’s official air quality forecasting system — has started an exercise to list and study all sources of emissions in the national capital.
The new study — second in the series — will look into at least 26 different kinds of pollution sources. Many of these were not addressed in the first study conducted in 2010 during the Commonwealth Games.
“This time we are considering some new factors such as condition of roads, pattern of transport flow from surrounding areas, construction activities and changing lifestyles like cooking habits,” said Gufran Beig, project director of Safar.
The emission inventory will comprise various pollutants including Black Carbon, Organic Carbon and Volatile Organic Compounds, which were not looked into in the IIT Kanpur study of 2016.
The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Control and Prevention Authority (EPCA) had stressed the importance of better forecasts, so that government agencies have advance notice of measures that need to be implemented under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
The exercise was launched on Thursday by the M Rajeevan, Union secretary of the ministry of earth sciences. It is likely to be completed by August 2018.
While scientists at Safar are gathering all available data from various ministries, government agencies and satellite data, the ground data will be collected by more than 100 students and researchers from Utkal University along with scientists who will be scouring the streets of Delhi over the next two months.
“These volunteers will collect different kinds of data regarding condition of roads, number of vehicles at intersections, speed and flow of traffic at both major and minor roads and intersections. Apart from this they will be asking questions to drivers who are stuck at signals to find out how much they travel everyday and the amount of fuel they use,” he added. The scientists hope to gather data from at least 30%-40% roads in Delhi and cover around 500 intersections.
The teams will be visiting some of the biggest slums in the national capital, around 80 major construction sites, road side eateries and dhabas to gather data of various kinds including the type of fuel that is used.
“Once we get all the data these would be fed to a Gis-based statistical model developed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune for better and more accurate forecasts,” Beig said.
Scientists said that unlike the previous study which had a resolution of around 1.67sqkm, this time the resolution would be 400 sqm, which would give the authorities a better idea of the pollution sources in each and every part of Delhi.