Air Quality Warning and Integrated Decision Support System for Emissions (AIRWISE): Enhancing air quality management in megacities

The occurrence of frequent episodes of elevated levels of air pollution during October–March in Delhi and National Capital Territory (Delhi–NCT) chokes its ∼32 million residents every year. Current air quality models lack the ability to accurately predict severe air pollution events in Delhi–NCT, rendering decision-makers helpless in their efforts to safeguard public health.

To address this, a new initiative introduced a high-resolution Air Quality Early Warning System (AQEWS) in 2018, followed by the integration of a decision support system (DSS) in 2021. This enhancement enables dynamic source attribution data and diverse emission reduction scenarios within a single model forecast. The newly developed system, Air Quality Warning and Integrated Decision Support System for Emissions (AIRWISE), assimilates near-real-time satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrievals, satellite-based fire information, surface data from 320 air quality monitoring stations, and high-resolution emissions, resulting in an extensive modeling framework.