Air Information and Response (AIR) Plan

🤖 AI-generated summary · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-06

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means

Ahmedabad already knew how to turn a forecast into an institutional response. Its air index, launched in 2016, stops one rung lower: a 'Severe' forecast produces a health warning and an SMS, and nothing that closes anything.

Outcome🔄 Ongoing

Evidence🔬 Peer-reviewedgrades the sourcing — this entry states no impact figure

what does this mean?

The strongest source behind this entry is an independent peer-reviewed or academic study. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →

Run byAmdavad Municipal Corporation health department, with the IITM SAFAR monitoring network

Scale🏙️ City-wide

Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 5 more in Ahmedabad · 🌫️ Air quality guide · 🌱 Environment projects

The AMC health department and the Ministry of Earth Sciences' SAFAR programme run a health-based air quality index for Ahmedabad, launched in May 2016 as the Air Information and Response Plan. Eight SAFAR stations — Bopal, Satellite, Pirana, Raikhad, Navrangpura, Rakhiyal, Chandlodiya and the airport — feed a daily index and a short-range forecast, published on LED boards, by SMS, in an app, and through a school flag programme that raises a colour matching the day's reading. The AMC nodal officer issues a Health Alert when the next day is forecast Very Poor (AQI 301–400) and a Health Warning at Severe (401–500). The published plan assigns communication, coordination and capacity-building measures; it attaches no mandatory restriction to any band.

Live 📅 since 2016

🎓 Lesson

A colour band is only worth what it can pull. The same city's heat plan hands a forecast to an officer with defined duties; the air plan hands it to the public as advice. Ten years on, the atlas found no published evaluation of whether the alerts changed anyone's exposure — which is the more common outcome for an index built to inform rather than to trigger.

🌱 Environment Air quality Sensors & IoT Health & care

Sources

↗ Jaiswal et al., Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 15(7):1460 (peer-reviewed)Carries the launch date and the alert rule. Verbatim: 'the AIR Plan and AQI were launched jointly in May 2016 by the MOEFCC Minister', and 'the AMC Nodal Officer issues a Health Alert when the next day's city-wide AQI is forecast to be Very Poor (red, AQI levels 301–400) and a Health Warning when the city-wide AQI is forecast to be Severe (maroon, AQI levels 401–500)'. Also lists the colour categories Good 0–100, Moderate 101–200, Poor 201–300, Very Poor 301–400, Severe 401–500. CAUTION for future editors: several secondary write-ups (including NRDC's blog) date the launch to May 2017; the peer-reviewed paper says May 2016, and that is what this entry uses.

↗ SAFAR / IITM, AIR Information & Response Plan page (operator)Names the eight Ahmedabad stations ('Bopal, Satellite, Pirana, Raikhad, Navrangpura, Rakhiyal, Chandlodiya and the Airport'), the 'AQI Colour Signal System for Air Pollution Alerts', and the 'School flag program that coordinates with schools to display coloured flags corresponding to AQI levels for each day'. The five plan strands are listed here.

↗ SAFAR-India homepage (operator, checked August 2026)Still-current evidence the service runs: the short-range forecast block carries a dated Ahmedabad line ('AQI of Ahmedabad today indicates "Moderate" and for the next 2 days likely to be within "Moderate"'), which is what rules out a defunct-but-claimed-live reading.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇮🇳 GRAP: Air Quality Readings as a Legal Trigger · New Delhi The same country, two rungs apart: Delhi's index has legal force, Ahmedabad's colour-coded index informs and nothing follows automatically. 🇮🇩 Court-Ordered Air Quality Monitoring · Jakarta Both expanded air monitoring without an automatic trigger — the measurement exists, the consequence is discretionary. 🇹🇭 Bangkok PM2.5 Monitoring & Graduated Response · Bangkok City air plans whose reach stops at the boundary of what the city itself controls.

Explore the wider context

📟 A Reading Is Not a Decision 📖 Air quality index (AQI)📖 Low-emission zone 📖 Urban sensor network

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Air Information and Response (AIR) Plan” — Ahmedabad, India. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/ahmedabad-air-plan/ (last verified 2026-08-06). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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