Almora being a popular hill station in Northern India – Uttarakhand attracts many tourists over the year. This gives rise to vehicular pollution and increases the particulate matter pollution in the region. Hence, to understand the concentration trends, Meatech deployed Particulate matter monitoring solution – Dustroid with real-time data visualization. This empowered the authorities to take mitigative measures by monitoring the pollution levels.

Almora is a hill station located in the southern part of the Himalayas in the State of Uttarakhand. Owing to its natural beauty, Almora is a tourism hub. It especially attracts a lot of trekkers every year. A high influx of tourists brings a lot of vehicular pollution. As a result, a significant increase in particulate matter is recorded during such time. Real-time air quality monitoring is of utmost importance to understand and reduce the particulate matter pollution in the region. Moreover, due to the climatic conditions, the particulate matter in presence of fog and humidity generates smog. To plan the mitigative measures, the authorities needed to monitor the pollution in the city.

The city authorities reached out to MeaTech to address the issue of increasing air pollution. Partnering with MeaTech, Oizom provided an air quality monitoring device – Polludrone – to MeaTech to understand the particulate matter concentration trends. The real-time vehicular pollution monitoring data showed a significant increase of particulate matter during the peak time of tourist and trekking activity in the hills. Vehicular pollution monitoring at Almora hills will provide insights into how the vehicular activity is affecting the air quality of the surroundings. The pollution concentration data that was collected by Polludrone was sent to the central cloud server for analysis. The pollution trend analysis performed on the data provided evidence for increased particulate air pollution due to tourist activity. Accurate and reliable monitoring data provided valuable insights into the temporal evolution of pollution in Almora.

Installing Polludrone helped the authorities understand the trend of particulate matter pollution. The data accessed by the authorities of Almora city helped gain useful insights to plan and update their policies. It helped them manage tourists and reduce vehicular emissions causing minimum adverse effects to health, flora, and fauna.