Ola and Microsoft Research have partnered together to measure the street-level air quality data in Delhi-NCR to support in the government’s efforts to combat air pollution in the capital city. As part of this partnership, Ola Mobility and Microsoft Research will share their strong research and data science capabilities to jointly conduct research and provide periodic reports and insights from the data collected. The collected air quality data along with traffic and speed data can then provide information on all the poor air-quality hotspots in the city.
This project is set to begin by the end of this month and is expected to collect millions of data points over the course of one year to understand the variation in Delhi’s air pollution during different seasons. The Particulate Matter (PM 2.5) data would be collected through sensors mounted on Ola’s fleet, for which cars have been identified based on complex algorithms to ensure maximum geographical coverage of data. The sensors will be mounted in the engine compartment of different Ola Cabs and will be custom made by a Delhi based company called Purelogic Labs India Pvt. Ltd. The collected data would be then be made public in the form of reports, while the raw data would be provided in open data formats to support research in specific areas. This project is a very important initiative by these companies, as it has the potential to be replicated across other cities to support the implementation of the National Clean Air Programme.
Venkat Padmanabhan, Deputy Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, said “At Microsoft Research India, we have a track record of conducting research that addresses pressing societal issues with innovative technology. The recent launch of our Societal impact through Cloud and AI (SCAI) initiative enables us to deepen our engagement with like-minded collaborators. We are excited to be partnering with Ola on the critical challenge of air pollution, leveraging their reach in the country and our expertise in cutting-edge technologies such as IoT-based sensing and AI, to perform a rigorous research study, with the goal of enabling informed solutions.”
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Speaking about the partnership, Anand Shah, Head, Ola Mobility Institute, said, “Air pollution is one of the biggest global environmental challenges of today. Most air-quality sensors today measure ambient air-quality which is not reflective of the street-level pollution people are subjected to on a daily basis. This project is part of Ola City Sense, a program to provide intelligent data-based insights to cities. We are confident that the data acquired from this study will add a new dimension of knowledge to what is already known about air pollution and help combat the problem better through hyper-local strategies.”