India Water Quality Data

Government data related to the water quality of India

Context:

There has been increased interest among the public about the Environment and living conditions in India. Especially, after since many manufacturing units are being planned, people are worried about how it will affect the underground water quality and the environment. Government of India, under the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has released the Water Quality Affected Data for 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The objective here is to analyze this data alongside with Forest, Industries, Habitation, and development projects data in the same area (panchayat) to figure out whether there is any connection between the development effort and the quality of water getting affected. This effort will identify such associations and create awareness such that people and the Govt. can act in time to avoid further deterioration of the water resources.

Content:

Currently, there is this data set of areas with affected water quality for the years 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Further datasets are expected for subsequent years. These datasets identify the state, district and specific localities in which water quality degradation has been reported in that particular year. Focus should be on the area (Panchayat/Village) rather than the district or the state as a whole, and observations should be made if there are any associations between the other sets of data available for the same area (from industrial, habitation, manufacturing and other sources, which I intend to add here also).

Acknowledgements:

My deep gratitude to the Government of India for making this data available through the Open Data initiative.

Inspiration:

1. Let's explore if there are any repetitive patterns of water quality degradation in the same area for multiple years.
2. As a whole, which areas in India has a lot of water quality degradation issues over the years (heat maps)
3. Which chemical is predominantly present in most of the water quality issues (heat maps). And why (from the associations with other developmental data like industry, manufacturing, development initiatives, housing, habitation, etc.)
4. As a whole, for the country, is the water quality degrading or upgrading (number of instances reported of water quality getting affected)?
5. Let's explore if there are any associations between the water quality data and the other developmental data. If there is, then what is the extent (visualisation) and how can we address it (prescriptive).
6. Let's predict if there are GOING TO BE water quality issues in areas that are not affected right now based on the developmental and water quality data that is available right now. Prevention is better than cure!