{
  "id": 15065965,
  "title": "A real-time dashboard to watch local spikes in air pollution: Inside the country’s biggest monitoring centre",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/16/a-real-time-dashboard-to-watch-local-spikes-in-air-pollution-inside",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-16T23:15:11.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Indian Express",
    "slug": "the-indian-express",
    "url": "https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/india-biggest-air-pollution-monitoring-centre-local-spikes-10925211/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "At around 5:30 pm on a Wednesday, several red lights illuminated on the dashboard at the Delhi Pollution Control Committee's (DPCC) new Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) in Shastri Park, Northeast Delhi. Wazirpur recorded a 60-point spike in the Air Quality Index (AQI) within an hour, while a monitoring station in Narela went offline and a camera at a construction site had not transmitted data for six hours. A senior DPCC scientist, gazing at a large monitor, noted that 44 out of 56 monitoring stations had PM10 levels above permissible limits, and 43 out of 56 had PM2.5 levels exceeding limits.\n\nThe ICCC, the country's largest pollution control war room, monitors pollution sources in real time. It operates round the clock with shifts from 10 am to 6 pm, and three additional shifts from 7 am to 3 pm, 3 pm to 11 pm, and 11 pm to 7 am. Data from monitoring stations, meteorological information, historical readings, and details on construction sites, industrial activity, road-sweeping and field inspections help assess real-time pollution conditions.\n\nOn this particular day, the AQI in Delhi was 148. With the help of data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Global Forecast System (GFS), officials predicted the dispersion or accumulation of pollutants based on atmospheric conditions. However, as the wind speed was below 4 km per hour, poor dispersion was expected.\n\nThe DPCC's monitoring system flagged several issues, including a near-negligible wind speed at some stations, a breach of the emergency threshold at Burari crossing, and the failure of several monitoring stations to transmit valid readings. Operator Shalu Yadav explained that alerts are classified into Priority 1 and Priority 2, with PM10 and PM2.5 values above 50 µg/m³, or AQI over 200, triggering an alert. Ground interventions were initiated for critical instances, and technicians and data analysts raced to address the situation before the temperature inversion effect could trap polluted air near the surface.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}