KANPUR, Sept. 15 -- The city will soon be able to trace sudden spikes in air pollution to their likely source, with a network of 125 sensors installed by IIT Kanpur expected to become operational for municipal action from October.

Unlike conventional air quality monitoring, which primarily records pollution levels, the new system will alert the Kanpur Nagar Nigam (KNN) control room when pollution rises sharply in a particular area and provide an analysis of what may have caused the increase.

The system, developed under the Airavat model and linked to an intelligent decision support system, uses artificial intelligence to analyse data from the sensor network. It can identify the likely source of pollutants, the direction in which they ar...