The Ahmedabad will get an Air Quality Early Warning System and a Decision Support System in next six months. The system will help the AMC forecast spells of poor air quality for the next 3 days based on real-time data using supercomputers.
It will also to identify the types of pollutants (PM 2.5, PM 10, NOx, CO, SO2) in different parts of the city and the origin of the pollutants (vehicles, industries). The system will also help the AMC to know the population that will be impacted by the pollution based on the wind direction.
The new system will have mapping and forecast based on readings from each square kilometre of Ahmedabad. It is being helmed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology Pune, in conjunction with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing which houses the country’s indigenous supercomputers.
Under the SAFAR System, the twin city area already has 10 Air Quality Monitoring Stations in Ahmedabad and 2 in Gandhinagar.
The early warning system was first launched in Delhi in October 2018 due to severe air pollution in the national capital but it lost importance during the Covid pandemic. However, it is now being revived. Five other cities will get the system including Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Bhubaneswar.
In Mumbai and Pune, the system will become operational in October 2023 while Ahmedabad and Bhubaneswar will get their early warning systems by March 2024. This early warning system is a substantial upgrade from the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research which already monitors basic air quality in the city.