Toward Socially Responsive Ambient Air Quality Monitoring in the Era of Distributed Sensing

O ver the past 60 years, stationary ambient air quality measurement techniques have changed substantially, moving from regulatory air quality monitoring stations and a small number of intensive "supersites", often run by academic laboratories, 1 toward increasingly distributed monitoring enabled by lower-cost sensors. 2 Early regulatory networks and supersites were designed to provide highly accurate, traceable measurements that underpin regulatory standards and deepen fundamental scientific understanding, 3 but they have historically been sparsely distributed (primarily due to their high cost to install and operate) and reported data at low temporal resolution (i.e., hourly or slower).As access to ambient air quality monitoring has democratized beyond these centralized systems with lower-cost sensors, the expectations for how air quality data are used, and for accountability assessments 4 in particular, have increased.Ambient air quality monitoring is now increasingly expected to support timely and localized assessments of regulatory effectiveness and to inform socially relevant decision-making.The degree to which ambient air quality monitoring is socially responsive emerges from coordinated design choices across network purpose, users, timelines, and flexibility.Some of these design considerations are actively being addressed, while others remain underdeveloped.This development is essential, as these considerations must be reflected in the underlying architecture of a monitoring system or network.