Abstract
The deadly COVID-19 virus has caused a global pandemic health emergency. This COVID-19 has spread its arms to 200 countries globally and the megacities of the world were particularly affected with a large number of infections and deaths, which is still increasing day by day. On the other hand, the outbreak of COVID-19 has greatly impacted the global environment to regain its health. This study takes four megacities (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai) of India for a comprehensive assessment of the dynamicity of environmental quality resulting from the COVID-19 induced lockdown situation. An environmental quality index was formulated using remotely sensed biophysical parameters like Particulate Matters PM10 concentration, Land Surface Temperature (LST), Normalized Different Moisture Index (NDMI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). Fuzzy-AHP, which is a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making process, has been utilized to derive the weight of the indicators and aggregation. The results showing that COVID-19 induced lockdown in the form of restrictions on human and vehicular movements and decreasing economic activities has improved the overall quality of the environment in the selected Indian cities for a short time span. Overall, the results indicate that lockdown is not only capable of controlling COVID-19 spread, but also helpful in minimizing environmental degradation. The findings of this study can be utilized for assessing and analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 induced lockdown situation on the overall environmental quality of other megacities of the world.
Highlights
Environmental deterioration has emerged as a rising alarm in urban centres around the globe, exclusively in developing nations
Keeping in mind the importance of all these parameters for assessing Urban Environmental Quality Index (UEQI), this study considered five main elements which are mentioned in the literature, namely, PM10 concentration, Land Surface Temperature (LST), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Normalized Different Moisture Index (NDMI)
The PM10 concentration map of Delhi shows that the pre-lockdown phase indicated a decreased amount of PM10 concentration, but lockdown time indicated a higher decrease in PM10 concentration than in 2019 and the pre-lockdown situation
Summary
Environmental deterioration has emerged as a rising alarm in urban centres around the globe, exclusively in developing nations. After the liberalization in the 1990s, India has been incessantly experiencing economic advancement, the rapid growth of the urban centres, uncontrolled infrastructural improvement, and industrial expansion [2]. According to the Central Pollution Control Board of India (CPCB), the major five constituents of air pollution are particulate matters (PM), nitrogen oxide, sulpher dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3) and, among them, the most prevalent threats for human health are PM10 and PM2.5. Indian metro cities have placed within the top 20 utmost polluted cities in the world exceeding the standard of specified air quality index (AQI) by the CPCB India and the World Health Organization (WHO) [3,4]. During 2015, in India, nearly one million lives were lost due to the high concentration of ambient PM [5]
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