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Abstract
High air pollution load in Indian metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, etc. has been a major contributing factor towards degrading the ambient air quality day by day. The degradation of air quality is a major environmental problem that affects many urban and industrial sites and the surrounding regions. A database consisting of information regarding the sources of emission, local meteorology and air quality may be created to assess the status of air quality. Air Quality Management System (AQMS) is a strategy to overcome the problems of air pollution and is most effective towards continuous improvements of air quality. It includes the evaluation of various sets of emission control schedules to determine consequences to air quality and the formulation of alternative emission control schedules to meet air quality goals. This research paper discusses the role of Geographical Information System (GIS) for the continuous improvement of air quality status as well as to make the AQMS more efficacious and cost effective. Various capabilities of GIS can be used to develop geospatial air quality models. A GIS based Decision Support System (DSS) for air quality management may be conceptualized with five modules, namely, data-entry module, assessment module, development module, control module and user-interface. It is expected that the development of DSS under GIS environment will make AQMS more efficient to provide an advanced modelling and analysis system for environmentalists, planners and decision makers.