Can the nation-wide COVID-19 lockdown help India identify region-specific strategies for air pollution?

• Published in: Spatial information research (Online) Vol. 30; no. 2; pp. 233 - 247
• Main Authors: Saadat, Md Najmus, Das, Sujit, Nandy, Senjuti, Pandey, Divya, Chakraborty, Monojit, Mina, Usha, Sarkar, Abhijit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore Springer Singapore 01.04.2022; 대한공간정보학회
• Subjects: Database Management; Earth and Environmental Science; Geographical Information Systems/Cartography; Geography; Remote Sensing/Photogrammetry; 공학일반; 42 Indian cities; COVID-19 pandemic; Nation-wide lockdown; Air pollution abatement policies; Air Quality Index
• ISSN: 2366-3286; 2366-3294
• DOI: 10.1007/s41324-021-00426-1

Air pollution is a serious concern with the developing economics in India and gets more severe when it has major cities ranked among the top 30 polluted cities worldwide. To find a solution, different programs and/or policies have been launched for air quality management country-wide. Unfortunately, no such plan could effectively solve the purpose rather than an unexpected COVID-19 pandemic situation in India. Our study focused on the air pollution status and air quality index (AQI) in 42 cities (that includes 6 metros) representing North, South, East, West, Central, and North-East region of India during the pre-lockdown, four lockdowns and unlock phases. The results depict most of the pollutants except ozone (O 3 ) were significantly reduced in the lockdown-1, and marginally increased in subsequent lockdown phases. Regarding the average AQI, its value was highest in North Indian cities (227), followed by East India (172), Central India (141), North-East India (130), West India (124), and South India (83) during the pre-lockdown. Due to COVID-19 induced lockdown, North Indian cities observed the highest dip in average AQI (108), followed by Central India (113), East India (82), West India (73), South India (55), and North-East India (49) in the lockdown and unlock phases. Thus, the study gave a conspicuous vision on mitigation of air pollution under this pandemic; and, if strategic centralized policies are sensibly implemented and by involving the participation of people of India, then there is a feasibility of air pollution issue management.