Centre launches Air Quality Early Warning System to fight pollution in Delhi

Air Quality Early Warning System

In a major move to tackle air pollution in the national capital, the Union Minister of State (IC) for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences has rolled out the Air Quality Early Warning System (AQEWS). The system will empower the existing air quality management system in Delhi-NCR and will aid in better decision making through its decision support system (DSS) that presents data for the early warnings.

The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), recently formed by the Centre for the National Capital Region (NCR) and adjoining areas, raised the need for such a system to generate early warnings on the deterioration of air quality. The Commission has observed the developments done by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, in this regard, and has nodded for the present version of the DSS for the effective management of air quality in the capital and the surrounding region.

The Institute has created a web platform https://ews.tropmet.res.in/dss/ for the DSS and the entire system is up and running. As per the Ministry, the website is best viewed on desktops as of now, however, it will soon be compatible with smartphones operating on both Android and iOS.

The Ministry, on a brief about the new system, said that the web portal will display quantitative information on the emissions from Delhi contributing to deterioration air quality; quantitative data on emissions from Delhi’s eight different sectors, biomass burning activities in neighbouring states, vehicular emissions, and more. The data on these will play a key role in implementing anti-pollution measures timely to keep air quality in the capital clean.

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Further, the web portal enables the user to create virtual emission reduction scenarios and assess the possible reductions in pollutants and improvement in air quality for the next five days. The data will bring to light the major pollutants degrading the quality of Delhi’s air and suggest possible solutions to lower down the level of pollutants. This makes it a handy tool for policymakers to ease the execution of measures.