Amid all these concerns, the city has turned to drones to monitor pollution hotspots, as well as those that spray water to suppress PM2.5. “Drones are useful for accessing areas that are difficult to monitor manually, such as crowded urban areas or industrial regions,” says R Subramanian, head of air quality at the Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy, a think tank with based in Bangalore. However, while these can identify sources of pollution, inspections and follow-up actions are required to resolve problems. “Local officials must observe and enforce changes, such as rerouting traffic or closing specific polluting businesses,” he explains.
Subramanian also highlights the importance of broadening pollution forecasts. “Delhi uses SAFAR, an air quality dashboard maintained by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, which provides three-day forecasts by combining computational models and machine learning. But extending this forecasting capability to 10 days would give authorities more time to implement preventative measures,” he says.
Even if Delhi’s confusing pollution control techniques can be refined and made effective – and there is much work to be done to achieve this – this does not address the fact that air pollution is part of a very large regional problem. wider, as recently stated. NASA satellite images show. A thick blanket of smog currently covers the entire Indo-Gangetic plain, stretching across northern India and Pakistan. Pollution affects the entire Plains basin, a region where air flows and accumulates, crossing state and national borders, transcending political boundaries. “Efforts to address it need to go beyond Delhi,” says Kumar.
Sagnik Dey, professor at the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, says satellite data is working to shift the focus from city-centric solutions towards a regional approach, which is reflected in the National Program for the clean air of India. “We can now monitor pollution of entire airport basins, showing that rural areas, particularly in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, are just as polluted, if not more so, due to biomass burning,” says Dey.
Satellite monitoring could go further, Subramanian suggests. He would like to see it used to monitor methane emissions from industrial plants to identify super-emitters, as well as for ground-based remote sensing of vehicles to assess exhaust emissions and identify faulty vehicles in need of repair or scrapping. These interventions could support broader evidence-based policy decisions, he argues.
“We cannot solve Delhi’s pollution problem by focusing only on the city,” adds Dey. “It requires collaboration between national ministries, central and state governments and local authorities.” However, while data is crucial for monitoring progress, Dey emphasizes that solving the problem requires intervention from regulatory agencies. There is a large gap between the work of the National Clean Air Program and what needs to be done.
Despite advances in pollution control technologies, Delhi’s air quality is unlikely to improve significantly over the next decade without decisive policy action, experts believe. Rising energy demand, urbanization and industrial growth will only add to the burden if heavily polluting sectors such as thermal energy, steel and transport remain poorly regulated. “We already have enough science, data and solutions,” Chanchal says. “What we need is the political will to implement them.”