SMART-VAYU

About the project

As Ahmedabad prepares for the 2030 Commonwealth Games, the city is looking beyond infrastructure and sporting venues to focus on something equally important—the health and well-being of its residents, visitors, and athletes from around the world. Improving air quality and reducing urban heat stress have emerged as key priorities as Ahmedabad moves toward building a cleaner, safer, and healthier city for future generations.

To support this vision, the Centre of Excellence on Advanced Technologies for Monitoring Air-quality iNdicators (CoE-ATMAN) at IIT Kanpur is working with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to develop an advanced hyperlocal air quality monitoring and intelligent decision-support framework that will help Ahmedabad strengthen its environmental preparedness for the Commonwealth Games while creating a long-term framework for sustainable urban air quality management.

As part of the initiative, approximately 400 ambient air quality monitoring sensors will be installed across Ahmedabad to continuously monitor pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10, NOx, CO, O₃, and SO₂, along with meteorological parameters including temperature and relative humidity. Unlike conventional monitoring systems with limited spatial coverage, this dense sensor network will provide real-time, street-level insights into pollution and heat-stress conditions, helping authorities better understand how air quality and heat conditions vary across roads, residential areas, industrial regions, and Commonwealth Game venues.

A key strength of the initiative is the deployment of IIT Kanpur’s advanced mobile Real-Time Source Apportionment Laboratory (RTSA), which will help identify major pollution sources across different parts of the city and also to train machine learning models for low-cost Source Apportionment.

The project will also establish an AI-enabled Decision Support System (DSS) integrated with Ahmedabad’s Command and Control Center. By combining AI-driven analytics with satellite observations, meteorological data, and Land Use Land Cover (LULC) information, the system will generate real-time environmental insights to support faster and more targeted and evidence-based interventions.

This platform will provide real-time monitoring, pollution forecasting, hotspot alerts, and actionable recommendations to support departments working in transport, infrastructure, waste management, energy, and public health sectors. In addition, the initiative focuses on strengthening institutional capacity, improving inter-agency coordination, and increasing public awareness around air quality and environmental health.

More than a monitoring initiative, this collaboration represents a long-term effort to help Ahmedabad become a healthier and more climate-resilient and future-ready city. By bringing together science, technology, and urban planning, IIT Kanpur is supporting Ahmedabad in building an urban environment that is better prepared not only for the Commonwealth Games but also for the environmental challenges of the future.