In a significant step towards bringing rural areas on the real-timeAir Qualitymonitoring map of India, theIndian Institute of Technology(IIT) Kanpur in association with partners is spearheading a project to deploy 1,362 air qualitymonitoring sensorsat block levels in Uttar Pradesh andBihar.
Similar models will later be replicated in rural areas of other states. The rural districts of India have, so far, not managed to be part of the national discourse on air quality as no baseline data is, currently, available from rural areas.
The project aims to deploy low-cost sensors, the first of its kind in rural India. Various pilots for deployment of air quality sensors have already been done in various urban areas but there is little or no understanding of air quality in rural areas in India.