Information Tools to Enrich Questions on Pollution and Mobility in Indian Cities Dr. Sarath Guttikunda An unprecedented expansion of cities, linked to economic growth, is putting pressure on the already limited infrastructure and consequently on the environment – such as, the case of urban air pollution and overall growth in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the industrial, domestic, and transport sectors. In urban India, though CO2 emissions and its mitigation remain a matter of less priority, the need to address the link between the growing air pollution and health impacts like asthma, bronchitis, and premature death, should receive high priority. If the cities have to streamline environmental concerns into the framework of sustainable urban development, it needs to find win-win avenues by operationalizing the co-benefit approach, with local air pollution as a priority concern, followed by climate policies for CO2. The key to strengthen these co-benefit approaches is “information” for (a) better assessment of capacity for identifying win-win strategies, (b) better institutional management, and (c) devising rational incentive structures. This presentation will focus on demonstrating “plug and play” information tools for the transport sector and applications for transport planning in urban India. Sarath Guttikunda is the founder of UrbanEmissions.Info (New Delhi, India), TED Fellow, affiliate assistant research professor at Desert Research Institute (Reno, USA), and developer of the SIM-air (Simple Interactive Models for Better Air Quality) tools, dedicated to sharing information on air pollution and climate change between cities. He is a trained chemical engineer, with Bachelors from Indian Institute of Technology (India, 1997) and PhD from the University of Iowa (USA, 2002). His research interests focus on studying the impact of urban emissions at local, regional, and global scales. He is currently involved in developing India’s first operational air quality forecasting system, piloting for NCR Delhi, scheduled for launch before the 2010 Commonwealth Games. This is the seven in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on issues related to the development of the city and try to address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah@ird.fr or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org
