Use of Remote Sensing Data to Identify Air Pollution Signatures in India
This work provides a method for identifying air pollution sources for policymakers and environmental agencies in India, which is an incremental step in air quality monitoring.
This paper uses Sentinel-5P satellite data to cluster Indian states and districts based on spatio-temporal multi-pollutant signatures. It identifies average monthly pollution trends for each cluster, which can help in identifying pollution sources.
Air quality has major impact on a country's socio-economic position and identifying major air pollution sources is at the heart of tackling the issue. Spatially and temporally distributed air quality data acquisition across a country as varied as India has been a challenge to such analysis. The launch of the Sentinel-5P satellite has helped in the observation of a wider variety of air pollutants than measured before at a global scale on a daily basis. In this chapter, spatio-temporal multi pollutant data retrieved from Sentinel-5P satellite is used to cluster states as well as districts in India and associated average monthly pollution signature and trends depicted by each of the clusters are derived and presented.The clustering signatures can be used to identify states and districts based on the types of pollutants emitted by various pollution sources.