India, Intel Partner on Real-Time Water, Air Quality Monitoring

The Government of India and Intel have entered into a collaboration to initiate joint research for real-time river water and air quality monitoring.

Under the 'DST-Intel Collaborative Research for Real-Time River Water and Air Quality Monitoring' project, proposals from academic and research institutions are solicited on developing online River Water and Air Quality Monitoring (WAQM) systems.

Those submissions which are selected will be provided grant-in-aid support. An amount of Rs. 33 crores has been set aside for this 5-year project.

Speaking on the occasion of the launch of the collaboration, Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences YS Chowdary said, "I hope global experience will come in handy to tackle local challenges."

"The aim of this initiative is to develop key technologies for sensing, communication and analysis of large-scale data collected from autonomous networks of perpetual sensor nodes," according to a press statement issued by Ministry of Science and Technology.

"This will be followed by integration and deployment for water and air quality monitoring in real-time. The program will be administered by the binational Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF)," it added.

This will eventually lead to development and deployment of low-cost, low-power, autonomous wireless sensor networks to provide a fine-grained view of several critical water and air quality metrics over large geographic areas.

Jitendra Chaddah, Senior Director, Operations & Strategy, Intel India, said, "We are very excited to collaborate with Department of Science & Technology in this advanced research program that would bring prominent academic and research institutions together to work on technology breakthroughs that can positively impact human lives."