IIT Kharagpur research team has developed an AI based arsenic detection system

Arsenic contamination detection through Artificial intelligence

Thursday, 17th September 2020

Researchers from the prestigious IIT Kharagpur researched on and successfully developed an AI based model for predicting and detecting the extent of arsenic pollution in the drinking water, said an official on this Wednesday.

The research team of IIT Kharagpur has been able to map the various high as well as low arsenic belts across the whole of the Gangetic delta and also the number of those exposed to that deadly chemical through the application of artificial intelligence (AI), said an IIT Kharagpur spokesperson.

This research paper has been published recently in the international journal named as ‘Science of The Total Environment’.

“Our AI models predict the occurrence of high arsenic in groundwater across more than half of the Ganges river delta, covering more than 25 per cent area in each of the 19 out of 25 administrative zones in West Bengal,” said Madhumita Chakraborty, one of the research scholars and authors of this publication.

While this AI based predictive model structure would turn out to be very crucial typically for identifying the sources of drinking water in the arsenic affected belts of the state of West Bengal, it can be made use of in the other portions of India too where the issue of groundwater pollutants is quite major, said the researchers.

Eventually, all these info make the baseline repertoire of knowledge for the very recently launched ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’ of the Indian Government.

“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,” said Prof Abhijit Mukherjee, research team head (IIT Kharagpur’s Department of Geology and Geophysics).

The researchers of IIT Kharagpur have used the AI-based algorithms on the human, geological and environmental usage parameters.

“Such successful use of artificial intelligence in geoscience enables us to find answers and build prima-facie understanding before further detailed field-based investigation or validation,” said Prof Mukherjee.

However, such regional-scale models may not totally remove the requirement for field-based investigation in multiple cases; especially for assessing the groundwater contaminants such as arsenic which is likely to be showcased through the well-to-well concentration variability, he added.

Source: Hindustan Times