National Air Quality Index Website

[srinivas kodali]

Hi All,

Here is the website for the National Air Quality Index. A simple made to look good website http://aqi.iitk.ac.in:9000/#

Play with it once. There is a air quality monitoring station in IIT Madras, the most greenest and least polluting part of Chennai. How can you compare that to chennai`s pollution when your sample itself is biased?

Delhi the stations seem different from that of Delhi Pollution Control Committee http://www.dpccairdata.com/dpccairdata/display/index.php , For example RK Puram and IGI Airport stations are visible no where.

Someone from each city please have a look at the station location in your city. I feel they are not spatially varied in the right way. 

Like in Ahmedabad, the only station is near kankaria lake. I believe it`s old city, correct me if I am wrong.

I feel all of this is more of a college project than a actual national project. The sensors being used to measure these readings are also not known.

@thej: Can we compare banglore data with the data you generate through your network and also other sensors placed in banglore? I feel the JP Nagar station is from the office of fields of view 

@harsha: I am not sure of the Sanathnagar Station in Hyderabad, the location seems to be wrong. Will you be able to find out more details please?

Regards,

Srinivas Kodali

[Eric Dodge]

A couple other points to add to the discussion:

The color of the map dots doesn't correspond to the AQI level displayed when you click on the station.

The color scale for PM2.5 is absurd. The WHO limit for PM2.5 is 10 but values up to 100 are being shown as green on this visualization.

Eric

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[Thejesh GN]

Is there a document on how this specific AQI is calculated?

Thej
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[Thejesh GN]

I found the document "National Air Quality Index - Book"

which explains how/what parameters are used to calculate AQI

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1762477-national-air-quality-index-aqi-final-book.html

Thej
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[srinivas kodali]

I went through it last night. They did use the readings from DPCC stations in Delhi for the analysis, but they are missing from the portal. 

Also check out what the US consulate has to say about Indian pollution http://mumbai.usconsulate.gov/airqualitydata.html

US EPA has a different method for AQI and the aqi doc compares all of these. 

The data being made available on the portal is for every hour. DPCC makes it available every 15 minutes. These people are averaging or toying with data somewhere at the raw source itself.

Regards,

Srinivas Kodali

[Pavan Srinath]

Please take whatever the new website shows with many buckets of salt.

Do check out this news clipping a friend shared: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzzz3fJIhB2xWVlQVlUzaDc5LTJIUHJtSnZ5TVEyWjRuUzkw/view?usp=sharing

They are confusing CO levels with PM levels! And thus declaring BTM Layout, Bangalore the most polluted place in the country. Let's wait for them to figure their fundamentals out.

Regards,

Pavan

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Pavan Srinath

Weather Enthusiast

Know Your Climate

[rajesh]

Since you asked about A'bad - a friend provided the following:

Kankaria Lake is indeed in old Ahmedabad, beyond Ellisbridge, not far from Kalupur (main) railway station. 

It is a very popular place thronged by thousands. Rejuvenated lake, zoo, Kids City, boating, balloon, Burmah bridge... 

So we may have to take the figure for Ahmedabad with a pinch of salt, may be a bagful of salt. The figures are like 1/4th of Bengaluru, though in population and area, we are about 2/3rd. But we accept that A'bad is much less polluted. 

The issue with A'bad is dust in the air. High temperature and dust, but definitely cleaner air.

He also provided reasons for transformation that i can pass on if folks are interested.

[sgutt...@gmail.com]

I recently joined the group and I am glad that I did.
Rajesh (IFMR) forwarded some emails from this chain.

Yes, AQI methodology is different from what USEPA uses. That has to, primarily, do with the background concentrations - in India, we have a higher dusty background concentration, which will not allow us to drop to a WHO guideline, which is very different from US cities or EU cities. The AQI reported by US embassies is based on their methodology and you will find a mismatch.

We now have a AQI system in place and a long way to go to be in line with how US or EU operates their monitoring systems and information flow.
A review on the same topic
@ http://indiatogether.org/cost-of-environmentally-smart-cities-and-air-quality-index-environment

With regards,
Sarath
http://www.urbanemissions.info

[Sarath Guttikunda]

good morning.

good morning and hope all is well.

following the India Together piece and the AQI related articles in the press, we had some questions on what to do, if the data from the stations is not reliable or enough.

The following is an effort to show the flow of information to AQI.
http://urbanemissions.blogspot.in/2015/04/infographic-reporting-air-quality-index.html
This is not meant to give a scientific background on the subject, but to show how the information can flow with and without monitors in place. There is more in each of the steps (+'s and -'s), but thinking about it is a start.

The bottom-up approach heavily relies on GIS databases.

With regards,

Sarath

--
Dr. Sarath Guttikunda
http://www.urbanemissions.info

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[srinivas kodali]

The Central Pollution Control Board http://cpcb.nic.in/ also has water and noise data on its website. But they are behind password protected portals. Wish they are open.

Regards,

Srinivas Kodali