On November 13, the Institute hosted a Lunch & Learn with Julie Pichonnat where she discussed the challenges to quantifying the impacts of Delhi’s air quality management program, GRAP.
About the Presentation
Title: Analyzing the Effects of Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) on PM10 Emissions in Delhi-NCR
Abstract:
It is notoriously difficult to quantify the impact of air quality management policies. Over the summer, I assisted with research at the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW), attempting to measure how Delhi’s Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) mitigates hazardous AQI levels in the fall and winter seasons. GRAP is composed of tiered responses that are implemented according to the increasing severity of AQI levels during the winter season, largely in response to stubble and biomass burning. My presentation will begin by discussing Delhi’s air quality challenges, the origin and seasonality of major pollutants, and how the government currently attempts to manage air quality. Next, I will describe the strategies my team and I used to capture the treatment effect of GRAP, including panel regressions, spectral clustering, and difference-in-difference. Ultimately, we’ll focus on the unique limitations of this project, why we failed, and what we think future research could look like.