Ola, Microsoft to measure real-time street level air quality data in Delhi

In a bid to support the government's efforts to combat air pollution, private cab aggregator Ola and Microsoft Research on Monday joined hands to measure real-time street level air quality data in Delhi-NCR.

Particulate Matter (PM 2.5) data will be collected through sensors mounted on Ola's fleet of vehicles.

Ola's fleet of cars for this has been identified, based on complex algorithms to ensure maximum geographical coverage of data.

The sensors to be mounted in the engine compartment of the cars have been custom-made by a Delhi-based company Purelogic Labs India Pvt. Ltd.

"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 edge technologies such as IoT-based sensing and AI," Venkat Padmanabhan, Deputy Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, said in a statement.

The project is set to begin this month and is expected to collect millions of data points over the course of one year to complete the spectrum of variation in Delhi's air-pollution.

"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 programme to provide intelligent data based insights to cities," said Anand Shah, Head, Ola Mobility Institute.

Under this partnership, Ola Mobility Institute and Microsoft Research will leverage their strong research and data science capabilities to jointly conduct research to provide periodic reports and insights from the data collected.

The data along with traffic and speed data can provide information on bad air-quality hotspots in the city.