Kolkata: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur said that its researchers have invented an artificial intelligence (AI) based prediction model for detecting arsenic pollution in drinking water.
In an official notice on Wednesday, IIT Kharagpur spokesperson said that the researchers of the institution have found the high and low arsenic zones across the entire Gangetic delta using AI and the number of people exposed.
The international journal Science of The Total Environment recently published the study.
“Our AI models predict the occurrence of high arsenic in groundwater across more than half of the Ganges river delta, covering more than 25 percent area in each of the 19 out of 25 administrative zones in West Bengal,” one of the authors of the paper and research scholar Madhumita Chakraborty told Hindustan Times.
The researchers said the predictive model framework will play an important role in the identification of drinking water sources in arsenic affected areas of West Bengal. It also can be used in other parts of the nation that are suffering from severe groundwater pollutants.
Prof Abhijit Mukherjee, research team leader and IIT Kharagpur’s Department of Geology and Geophysics head said, “The mission is based on providing safe drinking water to every household of the country within 2024 and the outcome of this research helps in providing information for the location of safe groundwater, which is the primary source of drinking water for most of India.”