Air Pollution Index India, SAFAR-Air, Sameer and Pollution tracker—there are many mobile applications providing air quality information about India’s metros, but in the absence of accurate localised information, monitoring locality specific air quality index becomes quite a task.
When IIT-Delhi alumna Namita Gupta decided to move to Delhi with her family from the US in 2014, she was shocked. The World Health Organization (WHO) had recently dubbed Delhi the world’s most polluted city, and Gupta could clearly feel the city’s toxic air taking a toll on her asthmatic father, daughter and her.
“Our asthmas turned worse, and we were constantly on antibiotics. There was so much panic in the family, that at one point we were wondering if we should move back to the the US. It was during this time that I first started monitoring air quality seriously. I realized that it wasn’t bad throughout the day, but mornings and evenings were the worst,” Gupta says.
Soon, Gupta started making small changes to her routine—scheduling morning walks to early evenings, rescheduling gym time to evenings, asking kids to wear masks—noticing improved well being for the family.
“I felt I could control the quality of air I breathed,” she says. Excited by the prospect of being able to protect herself and doing something about the city’s air, Gupta started working towards installing low-cost air quality monitors across the city. In September, Gupta launched Airveda, an app which allows users to track the quality of air around them on a real time basis. Update your location on the app, and it automatically maps the quality of air nearby, in addition to providing af the air quality level is bad, and if the filters of the air purifiers have stopped working.
Air Pollution Index India, SAFAR-Air, Sameer and Pollution tracker—there are many mobile applications providing air quality information about India’s metros, but in the absence of accurate localised information, monitoring locality specific air quality index becomes quite a task.
Moreover, experts point out that with only a few agencies relying on limited air quality monitors that scrape information from these few agencies—Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), US embassy, Central Pollution Control Board—the data is highly limited. It is no wonder then, that citizens are taking the matter into their own hands, collaborating with the government and NGOs to tackle the issue.
In February this year, Apollo Hospitals decided to partner with over a 100 Resident Welfare Associations, over 1,000 schools and autorickshaw drivers under its programme ‘Exhale’ to fight deteriorating air quality.
Stressing on the role citizens can play in helping control pollution, the Supreme Court-appointed Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority of Delhi and NCR also launched a mobile last Friday that relies on citizen participation to report incidents of leaf burning, garbage burning, building and construction and unpaved road dust to check contributors to bad air.
When users sign in they can file complaints in three categories—leaf and garbage burning, building and construction and unpaved roads. They can also take a picture and report an offence with an auto geotagging
system that forces the relevant agency to take action.
“Every citizen knows that Delhi has a problem, but no one really knows what to do about it. Through apps like ours, citizens can not only get the information they need, but also model their behaviour and responses to change things and take control over the air they breathe,” Gupta adds.
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