Recognizing the importance of developing the online River Water and Air Quality Monitoring (WAQM) systems, Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and Intel are collaborating to jointly initiate “DST-Intel Collaborative Research for Real-Time River Water and Air Quality Monitoring” soliciting proposals from Academic/Research Institutions and providing grant-in-aid support to the selected project(s). Speaking on the occasion of Launch of the collaboration, Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Shri. Y.S.Chowdary said that it is joint programme of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode. 

The Minister said that this programme is very critical for the restoration, conservation and preservation of the environment. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, top priority is being given to R & D in science and technology to come out with appropriate solutions to challenges facing the nation.

The Minister added that “at the core of any initiative, we see the role of Science and Technology everywhere....”. Elaborating on the DST-Intel collaboration, Shri Chowdary added that “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/long-lived sensor nodes, followed by integration and deployment for water and air quality monitoring in real-time. The program will be administered by the binational Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). River systems have been the birthplace of civilizations all over the world. They are woven into the social and economic fabric of society and penetrate deep into the psyche of the people living around them. Nowhere is this more evident than in India where the Ganga, Indus, Narmada and other rivers possess the cultural identity transmitted down the ages through sacred literature, the Puranas and the Vedas, as well as through popular myths and legends.

The Ganga is the largest and the most important river of India, with its watershed covering 10 Indian states, namely Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. The river Ganga (commonly called as Bhagirathi in the stretch Gangotri to Devprayag and Hubli in the stretch Farakka to Ganga Sagar) occupies a unique position in the ethos of people of India. Emotional attachment to the river and the centers of pilgrimage on its banks runs deep and long in the Indian History.

Discharge of untreated sewage from urban centres is a major cause of water quality degradation in the river. The total wastewater generation from 222 towns in Ganga basin is reportedly 8250 MLD, out of which 2538 MLD is directly discharged into the River, 4491 MLD is disposed into its tributaries and 1220 MLD is disposed on land or low lying areas. River Yamuna is another one of the most grossly polluted rivers in the country.

Air pollution is another emerging public health concern as there is increasing amount of evidence that the quality of air significantly affects our health due to the presence of various toxic pollutants. Linking air pollution from source to adverse human health effects is a complicated phenomenon that requires a multidisciplinary approach for better understanding. Further, air quality networks need to be developed that can depict and forecast pollution levels for public with health advisories and pollution emergencies measure. It is well known that increasing levels of air pollution are linked with more illness, higher use of health services, and premature death among the exposed population groups. Further, both Household Air Pollution (HAP) and Outdoor Air Pollution (OAP) have reported to have largely detrimental effects on the quality of life.

The recent report of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) has ranked air pollution among the top ten killers in the world, and as the sixth largest killer in South Asia. In a study by UNEP-WHO, it was estimated that about 6.3 million deaths worldwide are caused by air pollution, out of which 3.3 million are due to OAP and 3.5 million due to HAP. There is increasing amount of evidence that the quality of air significantly affects our health due to the presence of various toxic pollutants and therefore air pollution is emerging as a major public health issue. GBD also estimated that air pollution causes 6,20,000 deaths everyyear making it the 5^th leading cause of mortality in India.

One of the main causes of pollution in Delhi-NCR is high levels of Particulate Matter 10 (PM 10) and PM 2.5 particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that lead to hazardous smog and causes asthma and respiratory diseases. Air quality in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) worsened recently to alarming levels recording PM 2.5 reading of 500 on the air quality monitoring portals, putting the pollution level in the “severe” category.

In order to eliminate problems associated with manual water quality monitoring, DST and Intel have come together for development of state-of-art solutions for real-time river water quality monitoring. The goal of this research would be to enable the development and eventual 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 (cities, rivers, watersheds etc.).  These online sensor networks for river water and air quality monitoring will provide the pre-remedial quality status and would enable to assess efficacy of post remedial interventions based on real time reliable factual data. This real time data will significantly further strengthen and complement the Missions of National priority like Namami Gange Programme and others by serving as critical data feeders for pre and post treatment analysis.

Such networks may also eventually replace the current paradigm of environmental quality management via localized stations. The development of such an Internet of Things (IoT)-based solution will require innovations in sensor technology for miniaturized platforms for continuous, always-connected multi-modal sensing, ultra-low power radios for efficient communication and energy harvesting technologies to enable very long or perpetual operation of sensor nodes. These key blocks will need to be woven together by a data analytics framework that spans edge devices, gateways and cloud-based analytics, to enable inference and sense-making in a low-latency manner.

Speaking on the occasion, Jitendra Chaddah, Senior Director, Operations & Strategy, Intel India, said, “Intel has been engaged in supporting innovation and technology research, aimed at creating solutions to help address different community challenges and improve quality of life. 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.”

The development of such an end-to-end solution comprising of several individual research elements can also potentially impact environmental quality monitoring systems in diverse contexts such as urban, domestic and industrial settings.

A high level Israeli delegation led by Minister for Science, Technology and Space Mr.Ofir Akunis, including three members of Israeli parliament met Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Science, Technology and Earth Sciences. The visit of the Israeli S&T and Space Minister to India follows the visit of the President of Israel to India last month. In the meeting between the two Minister’s both sides agreed to give boost to the bilateral cooperation in science and technology under the aegis of the S&T Agreement concluded between India and Israel in 1993. Next year will mark 25 years of diplomatic relationship between the two countries.

Welcoming the delegation, Dr. Harsh Vardhan remarked that India values its science and technology cooperation with Israel which is a leading innovative nation of the world. He further added that we would like to identify new opportunities and mechanisms to expand and upscale our cooperation agenda by creating a value based relationship which can contribute to the 21st century knowledge economy.

India and Israel together have implemented a large number of cutting edge research projects in applied areas covering Agricultural and Medical Biotechnology; Human Genomics; Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology; Imaging Sensor & Robotics; Solar Energy; Communication & Information Technology; and Lasers & Electro-optics. This has led to new knowledge creation through high impact publications in peer reviewed international journals.

As a follow-up to the India-Israel Joint S&T Committee meeting which was held in Jerusalem earlier this year, the two Ministers agreed to step up the collaboration in the next two years by providing U.S. dollar 1 million from each side to support new R&D projects in the cutting edge areas of ‘Big Data Analytics in Health Care’ and ‘Security in Cyber Space’. The joint projects will be awarded to the partnering academic and R&D laboratories from the two countries during the next year. As a part of these projects, student exchanges will be encouraged in order to connect the next generation and sustain the pipeline of future collaboration.

In recognition of the importance of promoting women in science it was agreed to consider special initiatives to support women in science and technology through new joint programs in this area. Further, in order to engage best and bright researchers from India and Israel who can provide the future excitement in the science and technology relationship, it was suggested to hold ‘Frontiers of Science and Engineering Symposium’ targeted to the next generation future leaders, cutting across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.

The potential avenues and mechanism for collaboration particularly leading to establishment of ‘Networked Research Centers’ between the academic and R&D institutions from the two countries was also mooted. The virtual networked centre mechanism will help to leverage collaborative advantage by connecting the best performing research groups. To this effect, a joint declaration of intent was signed by the two Ministers for further follow-up.

The science and technology relationship between India and Israel has been unique in also promoting industrial R&D cooperation through academia-industry participation which has the potential to create new intellectual property, prototypes and products. This collaborative program is particularly significant in context to the Make in India and other national missions of the Indian government. The international industrial R&D cooperation of Department of Science & Technology (DST) with MATIMOP, the Israeli Industry Center for R&D, is administered through the Global Innovation and Technology Alliance (GITA) - platform of Confederation of Indian Industry(CII).

Dr. Harsh Vardhan remarked that by connecting the academic institutions and industries from both countries we will not only stimulate new knowledge creation but also foster innovation and techno-entrepreneurship. Both countries should continue their commitment to further strengthen this strand of our bilateral S&T cooperation which is of mutual relevance and in line with our national priority.

CSIR Scientists dwelt upon ways to reach benefits of science to the common man particularly in the rural areas as they discussed the issue on the eighth day of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Platinum Jubilee Technofest at the 36th India International Trade Fair (IITF). The Minister for Social Welfare and Empowerment, Thaawarchand Gehlot visited the CSIR Technofest as a Chief Guest today.

Addressing the seminar, Dr. Sudeep Kumar, Head, Mission Directorate CSIR, said,“CSIR’s objective is to reach masses through technology interventions.”

The session was also addressed by Mr. Bharat Bhushan from CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM). Issues like “Lavender cultivation on barren land, Honey extraction along with the flower cultivation were discussed.

The pavilion of ‘Societal Interventions’ displays aromatic products and drinks from different CSIR labs.

MoUs signing and technology transfer concluded the event. It included two agreements by CSIR-IIIM, one MoU each by CSIR-IHBT and CSIR-CLRI in the presence of Minister for Social Welfare and Empowerment, Thaawarchand Gehlot, Chief Guest at CSIR Technofest.

CSIR-IGIB conducted activities for school students, quiz for general audience and lecture on Diabetes by Anil Gaikwad, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute.

A battery car developed and commercially produced by CSIR-Central Electro Chemical Research Institute (CECRI) and CSIR-CMERI, in collaboration with auto major Mahindra steals the show at the ‘Energy’ theme at the 36^th India International Trade Fair (IITF), 2016, New Delhi today. It was a Lithium-ion battery powered 4-door electric car that became the cynosure of all eyes.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) unveiled its theme-based presentation on ‘Energy’ on sixth day of the CSIR Platinum Jubilee Technofest at the IITF, 2016, Scientists, experts, researchers of prominent CSIR labs and the industrial partners specific to this theme area discussed various issues relating to energy demand and the target of power generation based on renewable energy technologies. Dr. Girish Sahni, DG-CSIR, also participated in the seminar.

Addressing the seminar, Prof. Vijayamohanan K. Pillai, Director, CSIR-Central Electro Chemical Research Institute (CSIR-CECRI) said, “We have been active for many decades in not only developing technologies that produce clean energy but also for its effective usage.”Former scientist of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Dr. R. Sonde, emphasized on India’s contribution of renewable energy sector in the next decade.

An Indian Institute of Technology professor and fuel cell expert, Prof. S. Basu, spoke on fuel cells in a panel discussion. The day combined several engaging activities for school students and visitors. The CSIR Institute Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), organized quiz competitions, scientific presentation, engaging sessions of science-based activities and question answer round in the activity area.

As a part of ‘Platinum Jubilee Techno Fest’ of CSIR different themes-based activities are being organized each day at the India International Trade Fare (IITF) in New Delhi till 27^th November as follows.

15 November     Aerospace & Strategic Sector             CSIR-NAL/CSIR-CGCRI

16 November     Engineering & Infrastructure              CSIR-CBRI

17 November     Mining, Minerals & Materials CSIR-NML

18 November     Chemicals & Petrochemicals               CSIR-NCL & CSIR-IIP

19 November     Energy                                                 CSIR-CECRI

20 November     Ecology & Environment                     CSIR-NEERI

21 November     Leather                                                CSIR-CLRI

22 November     Water                                                  CSIR-CSMCRI

23 November     Agriculture & Floriculture                  CSIR-CIMAP/CSIR-NBRI

24 November     Food & Nutrition                                CSIR-CFTRI

25 November     Healthcare & Generics                        CSIR-CDRI & CSIR-IICT

26 November     CSIR for Societal Interventions           Dr. E. Desa/Dr. Sudeep

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