Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY OF AIR DURING LOCKDOWN IN HYDERABAD CITY – A GEOMATICS APPROACH

Shiva Chandra Vaddiraju, A. Saiteja, K. Roshan Reddy and R. Sai Lohitha

Abstract

The Exponential increase in air pollution is an alarming issue in most urban areas owing to various anthropogenic activities. Urban areas contribute to high human exposure to harmful pollutants. Identification of concentration of pollutants at a given location is not possible by a smaller number of monitoring stations. GIS Techniques help us in interpolating the existing data of monitoring stations spatially and thus helps us in better Air Pollution Monitoring and analysis. In the current study, spatial interpolation of SO2, NOx, PM10, PM2.5, CO, O3, and change in the trend of air pollution before, during, and post lockdown during the year 2020 of Hyderabad City is carried out through GIS Techniques. The study highlighted the distinctive role of Geo-Spatial Techniques in analyzing Air quality data and interesting results were obtained. From the study, it is observed that the maximum concentration levels of various pollutants decreased but still are not within the permissible limits defined by WHO. Maximum concentration levels of PM 2.5 decreased from 62.29 g/m3 to 39.55 g/m3and that of PM10 decreased from 146.36 g/m3 to 101.41 g/m3. The maximum concentration of NOx has decreased to 44.81 g/m3 from 54.49 g/m3 and that SO2 decreased to 8.15 g/m3 from 12.18 g/m3. The concentration levels of CO have decreased to 0.2 g/m3 from 0.49 g/m3 and Ozone has decreased to 32.99 g/m3 from 34.49 g/m3. GIS has been very useful in carrying out the present study.