Regional Workshop on Air Quality Instrument Operation and Maintenance

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH): Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. ICIMOD’s Atmosphere Initiative was established in January 2013 as part of the Centre’s Regional Programme on Cryosphere and Atmosphere. The initiative aims to bring about effective measures and policies for reducing air pollution and its impacts within the HKH by improving knowledge and enhancing the capacity of partners in the regional member countries.

Over recent decades, the HKH has been affected by rising emissions of air pollutants from urban, industrial, and rural sources. This has raised many environmental and public health concerns, including deteriorating air quality, impacts on health and visibility, and changes in the strength and timing of the monsoon.

Since its establishment three years ago, the Atmosphere Initiative has collaborated with Nepalese and Bhutanese government partners to establish state of the art air quality stations.  As a part of capacity building measure for our regional member country partners, the Atmosphere Initiative is initiating a five-day workshop on air pollution instrument operation and maintenance.  The goal of this workshop is to train nominated participants on basic knowledge of instrument working principles, daily operational aspects, maintenance, calibration, and troubleshooting.  The participant will have hands-on training with the actual equipment guided by engineers from the original manufacturers.  This is the first training workshop for air quality monitoring systems dealing primarily with trace gas analyzers. ICIMOD envisions future trainings based on feedback from this workshop on other air quality parameters such as particulate matter and black carbon.

The workshop will be hosted by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and will take place at TEWA in Dhapakhel, Lalitpur from 21 – 23 November, 2016. The workshop will be followed by a field installation of instruments at Ratna Park, Kathmandu on 24 November and at Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, on 25 November.

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