NEW DELHI: A mechanised road-sweeping machine (MRSM) in Gurgaon covered 56.5km in a day. That should have been great news, but the integrated command and control centre at Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) thought it was too good to be true. And it was.A detailed analysis found that the machine had swept just 0.3km, and the remaining 56.2km of its sojourn was off-route. Besides, the strayer had sped through its work at 23.2kmph, much higher than the speed at which it should operate to sweep effectively.This is one of the finds of the command and control centre – known as Platform for Air Quality Vigilance and Analytics for NCR (PAVAN) – to track pollution-related activities on real-time basis across Delhi-NCR.Set to be operational soon, it tracks live feeds from construction and landfill sites, emissions data from industrial units through Online Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems, and daily satellite data on stubble burning.Centre has integrated data from 2,300 air polluting industries It also receives data from all 108 continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations operational in Delhi-NCR, monitoring the status of pollution-related complaints filed on an app and social media, the implementation of the state action plan, and data from brick kilns.The centre, which is set to become operational soon, will monitor compliance with pollution control guidelines from 8am to 8pm. When a violation is detected, CAQM will send alerts to Delhi Pollution Control Committee and the respective state pollution control boards to take corrective action.Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav will visit to review the centre on Friday.The centre also has integrated data from nearly 2,300 grossly air polluting industries, which is being monitored to ensure that the emission levels from any industry do not exceed standards.Drawing on VAHAN portal, the centre will provide data on vehicles across NCR by category and fuel types.As of now, around six members of CAQM track the data received at the centre on a real-time basis for 16 hours. However, after the centre becomes fully operational, nearly 100 CAQM officials will be given access to the data for analysing the sector-specific status. PAVAN is located at CAQM’s office in Janpath.“Currently, only the CAQM team has access to this integrated command and control centre. In future, it may be shared with Central Pollution Control Board, union ministry of environment, forests and climate change and state pollution control boards,” said a senior official.Earlier this month, Delhi Pollution Control Committee launched a 24×7 command centre in Shastri Park which has AI-based analysis, live CCTV feeds, AQI data, GPS tracking of road-sweeping machines, and field-team movements on a single platform to tackle air pollution in the city.
