Emission Inventory is a scientific approach to identify the aggregated local source contribution and their region specific spatial distribution within the confined boundary purely attributed to local sources and hence a better effective tool to identify hot spots and plan control measures if local sources have to be targeted for mitigation.

The Delhi Emission Inventory campaign was second in series after 2010 (during CWG) to build a spatially improved emission inventory for Delhi-NCR. The new sectors/factors, which were being targeted, are like condition of road, pattern of transport flow from surrounding regions, construction activity, aviation, all kind of practices by immigrant works, changing life styles/cooking habit etc. 

Dr. M. Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India and the chairman, Earth System Science Organization flagged off the SAFAR mega emission inventory campaign for Delhi on 12th April 2018. It was about 2 months where more than 100 students had been participated and collected the primary and secondary data from as many as 26 different sources which contributed to Delhi air pollution. Students and researchers who were involved along with IITM team of SAFAR are from School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and experts from Utkal University.

The final product with 400 m x 400m high-resolution Emission Inventory of Delhi and fringe area of all eight important air pollutants (like PM2.5, PM10, NOx, CO, SO2, BC,  OC and VOCs) was released by the Union Minister for Earth Sciences and Environment, Dr. Harsh Vardhan on 15th October 2018.