Ministry of Environment to Use 3 NASA Satellites to Monitor Pollution

As part of Egypt’s systematic plan to reduce pollution and improve air quality, the Ministry of Environment is cooperating with NASA to utilise three satellites that will be able to locate waste fires and monitor pollutants of all kinds. Egypt’s air quality monitoring stations will be able to receive four aerial shots per day, which they can analyse to identify gaseous and solid pollutants before sending out inspection teams to minimize their impact and hold violators accountable.

Egypt’s early warning system for air pollution identifies and locates pollutants hour by hour, monitoring weather forecasts and the concentration of pollutants through 114 monitoring stations across the country. The number of stations has been on a steady incline as part of the country’s comprehensive plan to expand the scope of its pollution monitoring nationwide. The stations are split into three types - residential, traffic and industrial - and are dispersed according to population density.

Additionally, in a bid to curb the increasing levels of car exhaust emission, the Ministry of Environment has recently launched a series of traffic campaigns targeting violators of the permissible limits of emissions set by the Environmental Law and its amendments.

A map of air quality forecasts will be updated daily by the automatic early warning system on the ministry’s website for citizens to check the concentration of pollution by day and area.