AHMEDABAD: Just what is the best system to alert citizens to the air quality of their city? A new study led by researchers from Cept University has found that a composite air quality index (CAQI) based on fuzzy logic can predict the number of ‘good’ and very polluted days of a city.
The researchers compared the National AQI (NAQI) for summer and winter seasons measured between 2019 and 2020 — 67 days and 83 days of air quality monitoring was conducted respectively.
“In all, a total of 150 days, that is, 3,600 hours of monitoring data had been collected for these days,” claims the study by Dipsha Paresh Shah of faculty of technology, Cept university and Dr Piyushkumar Patel of VSITR, Kadi.
For summer, the NAQI chart showed that 11.8%, 83.8%, and 4.4% of days are in good, satisfactory, and moderately polluted categories respectively. On the other hand, the CAQI chart for summer showed 92.6%, 5.9%, and 1.5% of days in good, satisfactory, and moderately polluted categories respectively.
In winter, however, the NAQI chart showed 20.3% of days in the satisfactory category; 55.7% of days in the moderately polluted category; 10.1% days in the poor category and 13.9% days in the very poor category. During winters, 0% of days as per NAQI were in good and severe air quality category days.
On the other hand, during winter, the CAQI chart showed that 6.3% of CAQI values were marked as ‘good’ category, 22.8% in satisfactory days category; 11.4% values in the moderately polluted days category, 40.5% of values in the poor days category, 13.9% of CAQI values in very poor days category and 5.1% values in severe days category.
“The CAQI shows a realistic situation, especially when two or more pollutants are exceeding the national standards simultaneously. The composite air quality indexing tool is very useful in protecting the well-being of humans in urban areas,” claimed the Cept study.
