Decision Support System (DSS) for Air Quality

About Decision Support System

• It is developed by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune.
• It is a numerical model-based framework to forecast Delhi’s air quality and sources of local and regional pollution which can impact the air.
• DSS provides quantitative information about
  • The contribution of emissions from Delhi and the surrounding 19 districts to the air quality in Delhi.
  • The contribution of emissions from 8 different emission sectors in Delhi to the air quality Delhi.
  • The contribution from biomass-burning activities in the neighboring states to the degradation of air quality in Delhi, and
  • The effects of possible emission source-level interventions on the forecast severe air-quality event in Delhi.
• The system, which works only in winter and is stopped from March to August.
• Now, the system will also forecast how Delhi’s emissions impact the air of eight surrounding districts in NCR.
• The two models — System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (Safar) and DSS — had temporarily stopped sharing data on air pollution for the country as there were differences between their forecasts and source contribution.

Q1) What is the SAFAR system?

It stands for System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research. SAFAR is an air quality monitoring system. It was introduced by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) to provide location specific information on air quality in near real time and its forecast upto 3 days in India.

Source: System to identify pollution sources back in 2.0 version