“Thirteen of the world’s 20 most-polluted cities are in India, according to the World Health Organisation, but detailed information on what India breathes is scarce. The National Air Quality Monitoring Index launched by PM Modi in consultation with IIT Kanpur in October 2014 highlights this paucity of data – the city of Bengaluru, for example, has only five polling stations, and it is the only city in the state to have this kind of equipment. Only ten states in India have pollution monitoring stations, and Delhi, the national capital, has only eight stations. There are currently less than 60 publicly available pollution monitoring data points in India, [based on data aggregated by AQICN.org.
In December 2015, Indiaspend, a non-profit launched its own network of low-cost sensors to measure the air quality in many Indian cities. It currently has 18 polling stations in Delhi, nine in Mumbai, three in Bengaluru, and two in Chennai.
Pheonix Robotix, a startup from TIIR Cell, an NIT Rourkela-based incubator wants to build a network of over 150 pollution sensors in the Delhi NCR region, and has a crowdfunding target of Rs. 25 lakhs to get started – the project is accepting funds until March 15. Phoenix Robotix was one of the ten finalists at the Intel and DST Innovate for Digital India Challenge.
According to the company, the money raised from the crowdfunding project will be invested in manufacturing the “Aurassure Trust” device in order to create a financially self-sustaining pollution monitoring device network…” NDTV (Gadgets 360). Read the full article on delhiair.org.
Crowdfunding a Pollution Monitoring System for India
delhiair.org - be informed and active about air quality in New Delhi, India 