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Air quality management is a major challenge across the world and more so in urban areas where sources of pollution are many and varied. The issue of air pollution in India’s capital, Delhi has been a challenge for policy makers since long. Many interventions have been implemented to improve the quality of the city's air. Even though they have been effective to some extent, the city’s quality hasn’t seen much improvement. The comprehensive Action Plan for Delhi-NCR was notified in 2018 in order to tackle the issue of air pollution in a more comprehensive manner. The effectiveness of the plan and impact of interventions therein on the air quality has not been objectively studied yet.
This study evaluates the effectiveness of the various policy interventions in the Comprehensive Action Plan on the ambient air quality in Delhi, using scenario analysis. Various emission scenarios were evaluated by simulating air quality using AERMOD. The model was found to perform satisfactorily with regard to the performance metrics. Using scenario analysis, it has been observed that stringent measures would be needed in order to obtain significant improvements in Delhi’s air quality without regional coordination.
Keywords: Scenario analysis, Air quality management, Delhi, Particulate matter, Dispersion modelling
