The Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) has built its own integrated command and control centre (ICCC) to watch pollution sources across Delhi-NCR as they happen, giving the region’s air-quality regulator a single data-driven view of everything from dust on construction sites to stubble fires in neighbouring states. The facility, named Pavan (Platform for Air quality Vigilance and Analytics for NCR), is set to be operationalised shortly, according to a report in the Hindustan Times on 28 October.
The centre has been set up on the 16th floor of the STC building on Janpath in New Delhi, from where the Commission functions. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav is scheduled to visit it on 30 October to review preparations before it goes fully live, and officials said feedback from that review will shape final changes to the system.
One dashboard, many data streams
Pavan is designed to bring together data that has so far sat with different agencies and states. According to officials quoted in the report, the platform will pull in:
- Live video feeds from construction and landfill sites across the region
- Near real-time stubble-burning data from multiple satellite and tracker sources
- Readings from 108 operational Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS)
- Complaints logged on government air-pollution apps
- Data from brick kilns and progress on state action plans
- Vehicle counts by category from the VAHAN database, construction and demolition (C&D) waste collection status, and the India Meteorological Department’s seven-day forecast
A CAAQMS view lets the team pick out the ten most polluted stations in NCR at any moment, so that state pollution control boards can be asked to carry out on-ground checks where readings spike, and so that stations that consistently perform poorly can be tracked over time.
GPS tracking exposes off-route road sweepers
The dashboard also compares the GPS trails of mechanised road sweepers (MRS) against the routes they are mandated to clean. During a visit by the newspaper, officials pointed to one machine assigned a short stretch from Pataudi Chowk to Garhi Harsaru in Gurugram that had logged 56.5 km the previous day, almost all of it off its pre-set route of about 0.28 km, and at an average speed of 23.2 km/h, far faster than effective dust collection allows. Officials said the Haryana State Pollution Control Board and the civic body would be alerted at once, calling it an example of how real-time action becomes possible when field data is visible centrally.
From monitoring to enforcement
The larger aim is to shorten the gap between detecting a violation and acting on it. Officials said states can be sent data and notices of violations on a daily basis for corrective action, while the same data will feed long-term trend analysis and periodic reviews. The dashboard will also be opened up to state governments.
Staffing has been planned around continuous monitoring: six members working across two shifts will track the feeds through the day, while more than 100 CAQM officials will oversee sector-specific data and follow up on corrective measures.
Part of a wider command-centre push in the capital
Pavan comes weeks after the Delhi government launched its own dedicated ICCC at Shastri Park in east Delhi, which uses AI-enabled CCTV cameras to track more than 700 construction sites and GPS systems to monitor road-sweeping machines alongside air-quality stations.
For e-governance practitioners, the CAQM model is a notable example of a regulator building a cross-jurisdictional data platform rather than relying on periodic reports from states. Its effectiveness ahead of the winter pollution season will depend on how quickly the alerts it generates translate into action by state pollution control boards and municipal bodies on the ground.