Abstract:
Indian cities are growing rapidly, with increasing urbanisation and continuous
development. The air pollution in India has increased tremendously that the urban air
quality ranks worst when compared with other nations in terms of air quality. From
approximately three million premature deaths across the world every year, the highest
numbers are associated with India because air pollution. Studies indicate that the
respiratory diseases in Delhi are approximately 12 times more as the national average due
to air pollution.
The NCT of Delhi is selected as a case study area which ranks 1st in the metropolitan area
in India with very poor air quality. Six locations around monitoring stations based on
different land uses of 1km buffer are considered.
This research focuses to find out the relationship between air quality and built environment
indicators in the study region because built environment indicators influences air quality in
a way as said by many researchers, and the study of this will help in understanding the
problem of air pollution deeply which will help to analyse the relationship of the pollutants
in urban areas with built environment through land use regression model. To fulfil this, the
objectives are to understand the cause and consequences of air pollution; to find out the
relationship of air pollutants and built environment indicators like proximity to Central
Business District, Traffic Volume Count, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Metro
Station, Bus Station & Road Density, Non-Residential Ratio and pollutant concentrations
of SO2, NO2, OZONE, PM2.5 & PM10. Based on the analysis the research will draw
strategies based on the dependency between pollutant concentrations and built
environment indicators. The analysis tells us that there is relationship which do exist
between pollutants and built environment variables except Ozone which is not related to
any built environment indicator and no. of intersections is the only built environment
variable which does not make any significant contribution in any pollutant. Suitable
strategies and interventions is suggested to mitigate air pollution according to the
relationship established in the buffer areas like increasing Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index, creating green buffers between two different types of land uses,
increasing Non-motorized transport, shifting to cleaner fuels and electric vehicles, revision
in earlier strategies etc, DCR provisions to control air pollution in master planning etc.
