The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is preparing to roll out an independent, AI-enabled air-quality monitoring system that will operate parallel to the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) existing network, offering neighbourhood-scale data for the first time. The system will be in place in six months, said officials.
The platform, developed with IIT Kanpur, will use a network of low-cost, compact sensors across Mumbai to build a hyperlocal pollution map that captures fluctuations missed by the city’s 28 Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS).
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Each CAAQMS often fails to reflect sharp local spikes around construction corridors, traffic choke points or industrial pockets.
Officials said the new system, named the Mumbai Air Network for Advanced Sciences (MANAS), is designed to significantly shrink this radius by deploying 75 sensors across the city.
BMC will maintain the MANAS portal, which will record more granular data and broadcast real-time, neighbourhood-level AQI information.
These sensors will relay particulate and pollutant readings to a dedicated, locally managed BMC dashboard. Unlike the CPCB’s national interface, the new platform will be controlled and updated entirely by the civic body.
A key feature of the system is its integration of an artificial intelligence model developed by IIT Kanpur to analyse incoming data and identify probable sources of pollution.
The AI will flag hotspots, detect patterns and correlate spikes with activities such as construction work, congestion or abrupt meteorological shifts.
“This will allow the civic body to trace pollution surges more accurately and deploy targeted mitigation measures. We will first identify the specific locations where sensors are needed based on available data. This will be ready in the next six months and we will open it to the public in mid-2026,” said a senior BMC official.
Before the platform is opened to the public, BMC will run data from the new sensors alongside existing CAAQMS stations to test reliability, remove discrepancies and establish calibration standards. Only after consistency is confirmed will MANAS be made publicly accessible.