Air Information & Response (AIR) Plan - Pune

Pune's Air Quality and the Air Information & Response (AIR) Plan

Date: 17^th October 2019

Venue: IITM, Pashan road, Pune

Participants: Representatives of 15 – 20 organisations

On 17^th October 2019, the key organizations assembled for a roundtable discussion in Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), which was co-organized with Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in partnership with Indian Institute of Public Health – Gandhinagar (IIPH-G) and the Centre for Environment Education (CEE).

The team has analyzed the current state of air pollution in the city and, based on the localized feedback, is in the process of developing a detailed health risk communication strategy to minimize the health effects of air pollution.

The objectives of the roundtable:

1.Identify opportunities for Pune city to take actions to improve air quality and protect public health, such as monitoring and Air Quality Index (AQI) systems, community outreach/IEC, policy approaches and applied scientific research.

2.Discuss the role of each participating organisation and key stakeholders like public health and medical professionals, academic institutions and civil society organisations, and key municipal departments in charge of mitigation measures in implementing the air action plan.

3.Seek feedback and developing consensus on the framework for a strategic health risk communication plan for Pune.

The roundtable was started with Dr. Gufran Beig, IITM addressing the participants with the objectives of the meeting. Polash Mukherjee, NRDC explained the status of Pune's air quality and introduced Pune's Air Information & Response (AIR) Plan, which was continued by Dr. Utkarsh Mukkanwar and Shruti Dole, IITM emphasizing on the ongoing emission inventory-source identification in Pune. Sanskriti Menon, CEE highlighted the ongoing initiatives in air quality management.Dr. Shyam Pingle, IIPH-G elaborated the issues of air pollution and health.

The open discussion of the roundtable covered the topics of Pune's CAP under NCAP, role of health and medical professionals and CSO's, monitoring and data availability, sectoral approaches to air pollution for best practices and potential levers for policy action.

*During the roundtable, TERRE Policy Centre represented by Dinah Gengmei introduced Smart Campus Cloud Network (SCCN) project, which is a network of the educational campuses of universities/colleges for contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by deploying digital technologies. Presently 70+ Universities are in the network including 7 from outside India.

She also mentioned the Research based initiative of integrating air quality with health advisories under SCCN and technical support of IITM - On the occasion of World Environment Day 2019 aligning with the theme of Air Pollution, TERRE in close collaboration with IITM launched the initiative of Air Quality Monitoring (AQM) in the campuses in MIT World Peace University. AQM station was commissioned in the campus to measure air quality (PM 2.5 and PM 10) within the radius of 5 km. The team of students and faculty of Computer Science Department, MITWPU developed a mobile app that displays air quality index online with messages for preventive and corrective actions.

Conclusion of the roundtable as moderated by Dr. Gufran Beig:

1. Engagements of students community (schools and colleges) in the areas of mitigation and research - IITM would be open to share the relevant data with the campuses

2. Campuses should be encouraged to participate in emission inventory - IITM would be proactive in giving lectures / awareness sessions in campuses – Flag program kit will also be provided by IITM

3. College students can carry out long term (6 months – 1 year) to short term (15 days) research in related topics under SAFAR's initiative

5.  SAFAR stations are open for field visits to students community

6. 'Lung function' test campaigns can be organised for campuses - In collaboration with authorised medical professionals since, IITM is not authorised to do it independently.