NeelaNetra: Satellite-based water pollution monitoring
An open-source platform leveraging Sentinel-2 satellite data to monitor historical water pollution trends and map environmental disease vulnerability.
The Problem Water pollution is a rapidly accelerating crisis, but monitoring it on a large scale is traditionally expensive and relies on closed-source data. Furthermore, stagnant and polluted water bodies directly correlate to the outbreak of vector-borne and waterborne diseases in surrounding communities. Local authorities often lack free, accessible tools to track these environmental risks over time.
Our Proposed Solution We are building an open-source, satellite-driven monitoring tool. By analyzing open multispectral imagery from Sentinel-2, our platform will track changes in water bodies (like the Yamuna) over the past several years. We will detect proxies for pollution—such as algal blooms, turbidity, and stagnation—by calculating geospatial indices like the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). By mapping these high-risk environmental zones, we can highlight areas vulnerable to disease outbreaks.