Two new sites launched by CDF

India Pollution Map

The Center for Development Finance (CDF) has launched what is probably the country's first online pollution map.

The online map, which can be viewed at www.indiapollutionmap.org, is an innovative web tool to support and strengthen the pollution monitoring regime in India. The map will aim at supporting more meaningful tracking of environmental changes by creating a repository on pollution monitoring.

In the first phase, CDF has developed the map for Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. The data for the map has been accessed through two main methods – desk research for secondary data, and RTI applications. The map makes existing pollution data more accessible and informative by transforming it into user-friendly visual displays, which link pollution levels and monitoring sites to specific places in the country.

The pollution map is part of CDF's overall efforts to improve the amount, quality and accessibility of data available for policymakers and citizens to debate priorities and understand progress in holistic development.

Transparent Chennai - Visualizing City Planning

CDF has also developed a website to display spatial variations in expenditure, time and nature of public works and its quality, through a combination of re-packaging public data and soliciting citizen-generated data.

Information surrounding municipal public works continues to be inaccessible and limited. The lack of information prevents citizens from examining the planned, new, and existing public works contextually, in relation to broader developmental needs and spending trends in the city, from questioning government policymaking, and from holding the government accountable for its work. When information about government spending has been provided, it has not been provided in a format that is easy for citizens to use or understand.

“Visualizing City Planning,” an interactive map, provides a means of reporting public works that could potentially empower citizens. This map enables users to map existing public works and services, but it goes one step further. As a beginning, this project by maps various large scale transport infrastructure projects in the city of Chennai along with selected demographic layers within ward boundaries as well as a layers showing slum evictions and environmentally sensitive areas. The website can be viewed at www.transparentchennai.com.