PPCB, remote sensing centre join hands to prevent stubble fires

CHANDIGARH: To check burning of paddy stubble during the kharif harvest expected to begin from October 1, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) and the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC) will coordinate to ensure the entire effort gets a common platform. The PRSC, based at Ludhiana, has developed an android-based mobile application to provide end-to-end solution for reporting and action taken for each fire incident captured through satellite.

“Now the district administration including deputy commissioner, patwari, SDM, district police, nodal officers, PPCB staff, even officers up to the level chief secretary would also be involved in the monitoring system. In the previous years, synchronicity in operations to stop stubble burning was lacking,” said a PPCB officer.

This year, the location of every incident will be visited within two days and environment compensation would be imposed on the farmer. In 2019 kharif, around 51,000 cases were reported.

“It was desired by the state government that a mobile and web based application should be developed, in which role based login (village nodal, cluster, sub division/tehsil and district level) was possible,” said Brijendra Pateria, head, PRSC. He added that the ATR will be generated after the field officers visit the burning site. A semi automatic system is already in operation.

PPCB member secretary Krunesh Garg added the ATR information will be generated for each active fire point that the PRSC reported through satellite data analysis. This information will be used as input to the dashboard for the ATR that PRSC has developed.