Mumbai Air Network for Advanced Sciences (MANAS)
About the project
Mumbai’s rapidly evolving urban landscape, growing infrastructure, increasing traffic congestion, and continuous construction activities have significantly impacted the city’s air quality in recent years. Although Mumbai has long benefited from its coastal geography, several parts of the metropolitan region are now witnessing rising particulate pollution, localized hotspots, and increased exposure risks for residents. The complex and interconnected nature of pollution across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region highlights the need for a more integrated, data-driven, and regionally coordinated approach to air quality management.
To address these emerging challenges, IIT Kanpur, through the Centre of Excellence on Advanced Technologies for Monitoring Air-quality iNdicators (CoE-ATMAN), has launched the Mumbai Air Network for Advanced Sciences (MANAS) initiative in collaboration with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). MANAS aims to strengthen Mumbai’s environmental monitoring capabilities by developing a dense, technology-enabled air quality network capable of capturing pollution patterns at much finer spatial scales than conventional monitoring systems.
As part of the ongoing initiative, the Sensor-based Ambient Air quality Monitoring (SAAQM) systems fitted with dehumidifiers are being deployed across multiple locations in Mumbai to continuously monitor PM2.5, PM10, temperature, and relative humidity. These observations are being integrated with existing government monitoring stations, meteorological information, and satellite data to generate detailed pollution maps at hyperlocal and sub-kilometer scales. This integrated approach enables a deeper understanding of how pollution varies across different parts of the Mumbai in near real time. This approach helps evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing mitigation measures, enabling city authorities to move toward more proactive, evidence-based, and data-driven environmental management strategies.
The initiative also includes the development of a real-time air quality analytics dashboard integrated with Mumbai’s Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC). The platform is designed to support live monitoring, hotspot alerts, visualization tools, trend analysis, and informed decision-making for urban administrators, planners, and policymakers. In addition, the project is also assessing existing pollution-control measures, identify technology gaps, and recommending long-term interventions for improving air quality and reducing associated public health risks.
Through MANAS, IIT Kanpur is supporting Mumbai in building a cleaner, healthier, and more climate-resilient urban environment through advanced air quality monitoring and data-driven environmental management. As India’s financial capital and one of the country’s most densely populated coastal megacities, Mumbai’s environmental health is critical not only for its residents but also for the broader urban future of India. By enabling real-time pollution monitoring and timely mitigation measures, the initiative aims to help preserve Mumbai’s ecology, improve air quality, and protect the city’s unique coastal breeze and environmental character for future generations.