Airveda’s Role in AMRIT: Transforming Rural Air Quality Monitoring Across Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
October 29, 2024
Team Airveda
2 min readIIT Kanpur, Open Philanthropy, Bihar Pollution Control Board
Research and Policy
Bihar & Uttar Pradesh
690 Sensors
Accurate and reliable air quality monitoring in rural areas, addressing issues of limited electricity, poor connectivity, and security challenges.
Introduction
Air quality monitoring has focused mainly on urban areas, leaving 65% of India’s rural population without crucial data. To address this, IIT-Kanpur's CoE-ATMAN, led by Prof. S. N. Tripathi, partnered with Bihar and UP Pollution Control Boards to deploy 1,400 air quality sensors across rural regions.
The AMRIT project has installed 534 nodes in Bihar and 826 in UP, with support from local governments. Airveda supplied 690 air quality monitors for this initiative. This large-scale data will aid in policy development and raise awareness among rural populations. The AMRIT Bihar Network was inaugurated in March 2024 by Hon’ble Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during the Bihar Climate Action Conclave.
Testimonial
I am pleased to report that the performance of Airveda AQM devices have been consistently impressive. When collocated with the Metone Beta Attenuation Monitor, which is meticulously maintained by my research team, the Airveda AQM devices have demonstrated an excellent correlation, with R2 value of approximately 0.9.
Experience with Airveda has been very positive. The AQM devices have not only provided high-quality data and reliable calibrations but also shown robust hardware performance and consistent reliability in the field. We look forward to continuing this productive partnership and achieving further success together
Goal of AMRIT
- Deployment of state-of-the art Sensor Ambient Air Quality Monitor (SAAQM) network for rural air quality monitoring.
- Optimization of SAAQM network for different environments and evaluate the difference between rural and urban air quality of India.
- The proposed large network of SAAQM data will also be used to create micro airsheds within the different states so that the air quality at the district level can be effectively managed by understanding the contribution from the different sources within the micro airshed (i.e., industries, vehicles etc.) and also sources within the larger airshed.
- Comparing data with emission inventories, source attribution analysis and pollution models over different states.
- Develop novel tools for data mining, network calibration, data visualizations and interpretation.
- Help demarcate rural regions to understand how much rural air pollution can be attributed to local sources vs. nearby urban cluster of any states.
- Enable awareness and education programs on air pollution and health for rural areas of Indian States.
- Establishing the rural air quality data for science studies and policy development for rural air quality management.
Problem Statement
Despite the critical need for air quality data in rural areas, deploying air quality monitors in these regions presents several challenges:
- Limited Electricity Availability: Rural areas often face irregular or limited power supply, with frequent power outages, which can disrupt the continuous monitoring of air quality.
- Poor Internet Connectivity: Many rural regions suffer from poor or inconsistent internet connectivity, making real-time data transmission and monitoring a significant challenge.
- Security and Maintenance: Finding safe locations for sensor deployment, as well as protecting them from theft, vandalism, or damage, is a substantial concern in rural areas.
- Accuracy of Data: The Bihar government emphasized the importance of accurate data for decision-making. Ensuring that sensors provide reliable and precise air quality measurements in rural settings, where environmental conditions may vary greatly from urban areas, adds complexity to the project.
These challenges must be addressed to ensure the success of the AMRIT project and enable effective monitoring of air quality in India’s rural heartland.
Solution
- Airveda specifically developed air quality monitors for this project which are capable of operating on solar energy during the day, along with a large battery backup of over 18 hours, to overcome unforeseen interruptions in the electricity supply.
- These devices have local memory of up to 4 days to ensure that in case of internet outages, data is stored on the device and sent to the server once the internet becomes available.
- To solve the deployment problem, IIT Kanpur signed an MOU with the Bihar Pollution Control Board and UP Pollution control board to garner support from the respective Governments to enable the deployment of these sensors in the Panchayat offices in each Rural Block, ensuring proper distribution as well as the safety of the sensors. For the Bihar deployment, they also supported us by giving us permission to use the Bihar Pollution Control Board logo on our devices enabling them to be seen as government-affiliated devices providing further security to these devices.
- Every device was co-located with a BAM at IIT Kanpur for 2 weeks and data was rigorously tested to ensure that it met the US EPA standards.
- Bi-weekly calls were set up where the IIT Kanpur and Airveda team met regularly to ensure that any issues with the devices hardware or data could be fixed immediately and deployment timelines could be met.
Co location Data in Bihar
Below is some colocation data since August where our monitor is placed next to the BIT Patna and Katihar BAM which are managed by Bihar State Pollution board.
More details for the project can be found at https://atman.urbansciences.in/amrit/
Airveda team is a group of individuals working tirelessly with a mission to help people breathe well and live well.