Air quality panel ropes in agencies to develop tool to read nature of emissions

The sources of emissions covered will include industries, transport, power plants, residential, DG sets, road dust, agricultural burning, refuse burning, construction dust, ammonia, volatile organic compounds, landfills etc.

The Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and adjoining areas (CAQM) has commissioned several agencies to develop a ‘Decision Support System’ tool to capture the nature and source of emissions in the region, to focus interventions to curb emissions.

The interventions suggested by the tool can be implemented by the pollution control boards and its implementation can be monitored by citizen watch groups and NGOs, the statement said. (Arvind Yadav/HT Photo)

The panel has entrusted the work of developing the system to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, to forecast air quality using its weather models; The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) to develop a fine resolution emission inventory; the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to develop short and long-term control interventions and to identify hot spots. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune has been assigned the job of integrating the physical, chemical and engineering aspects of the tool.

“This tool will help capture the static and dynamic features of the emissions from various sources. It will have an integrated framework to handle both primary and secondary pollutants using chemical transport model. The system will also be able to handle the source specific interventions with the framework to estimate benefits of interventions,” a statement from the Commission on Friday said.

The sources of emissions covered will include industries, transport, power plants, residential, DG sets, road dust, agricultural burning, refuse burning, construction dust, ammonia, volatile organic compounds, landfills etc.

The interventions suggested by the tool can be implemented by the pollution control boards and its implementation can be monitored by citizen watch groups and NGOs, the statement said.