Sanction of Project by MeitY to Team from UIET, PU

Chandigarh April 2, 2020

Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has sanctioned research project entitled ‘Multi-Modal Framework for Monitoring Active Fire Locations (AFL) and Precision in Allied Agricultural Activities using Communication Technologies’ with financial outlay of Rs. 81.25 Lacs for two years (2020-2022). The team is led by Professor Harish Kumar, UIET, Panjab University and includes Professor Sakshi Kaushal, Professor Sarbjit Singh, Dr. Akashdeep, Dr. Veenu Mangat, Dr. Mukesh Kumar, and Dr. Preeti.  In execution of the project team is looking forward to rope in Government of Punjab as well as Government of Haryana as the user agency as Stubble burning is one of the major problems being faced by citizens of northern India. It is a precursor to various respiratory disorders like Asthma, skin and eye related diseases, low breathing air quality. Despite Government of India’s initiatives in increasing awareness about this evil, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of such incidents every year. It is pre-dominant in the
Northern states namely Punjab, Haryana. Each year, approximately 10000+ biomass burning related fires per week are reported during the harvesting season. Although various governments are making sustainable
efforts to curb this menace but lack of single system that can integrate detection, alerting, report filing, monitoring and best practices, is still far from reality.

Project aims to utilize innovations in the field of communication technologies like IoT, machine learning and digital world, to propose a single system that is capable of performing various tasks involved in detection, surveillance and monitoring of Active Fire Locations. Data captured from satellite will be exploited to identify Active Fire locations. In order to improve the preciseness of identified locations, machine learning techniques will be employed for generating a mapping between locations extracted using satellite data and actual on-field locations captured by field visits (Ground Truths). The integration of data captured by various sensors and the learnt mapping will greatly aid in reaching out to actual real time location of AFL.  It will also act as Command and Control center to bridge the gap between farmers and various agencies involved in best practices for
crop residue management by providing a common interactive platform.