Why in news?
A group of U.S. researchers is working on a system to map surging pollution trends in the Godavari.
What is the project about?
- The exercise is part of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project.
- It is to support the programme of the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) to provide city-wide sanitation improvements in urban Andhra Pradesh.
- The team’s long-term objective is to inform State officials and citizens of a probable spike in levels of dangerous microbes or effluents.
- The project has identified two “hotspots” of pollution.
What methods are used?
- The methods includes satellite-monitoring to collect water samples.
- It also uses special sensors to measure bacterial and chemical pollution.
- Cloud-based data collection and real-time mapping is also used.
- The sampling exercise measures parameters such as total dissolved salts, nitrate, pH, temperature, turbidity and electrical conductivity.
- These are then relayed to map environmental parameters for analysis.
What are the advantages of this project?
- It is accesses “raw data” that could be used to inform the efficacy of a proposed faecal sludge treatment plant
- It also can be used to analyse behavioural interventions including incentives or punishments to restrict activities that pollute the river could actually work.
- It can detect and anticipate pollutants that enter the Godavari.
- It can develop an economical river water forecast system.
- In advanced stages, low-cost sensors can be used to measure microbial levels in real time.
Source: The Hindu
