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Researchers have warned that the paradigm about who should measure air quality (AQ) in cities can change as low-cost commercial sensors for monitoring atmospheric composition gain global popularity. The new paradigm implies the expansion of the traditionally governmental responsibilities for AQ monitoring (to collect, interpret, and explain the data) to previously uninvolved actors. This study reports a first practical example of such changed AQ paradigm that occurred in a large industrial city of Krasnoyarsk (Russia). We describe how severe problems with urban AQ and a limited access to the AQ data from governmental sensors triggered decentralization of the AQ monitoring in the city. The decentralization is manifested by the fact that both governmental network and crowdfund-based activist AQ network, are being used for scientific and, to some extent, advisory purposes. The decentralization was foremost established due to the ambiguous quantitative information about AQ provided to users by the governmental network, exacerbated by efficient alternatives for alleviating this gap, offered by the activists. The unique decentralization of AQ monitoring in Krasnoyarsk can transform into the synergy between the government and citizen action aimed on easing air pollution as the governmental organizations can efficiently reinforce the resources (funds and manpower), and provide legal and technical support, while civic action groups with established audience can consolidate targeted groups of citizens for formulating efficient city-wide strategies in AQ management. Such synergy can become an inspiring example for the cities with degraded AQ, where the official monitoring is plagued by financial or technological limitations.

The benefits of urban green and blue infrastructure (UGI) are widely discussed, but rarely take into account local conditions or contexts. Although assessments increasingly consider the demand for the ecosystem services that UGI provides, they tend to only map the spatial pattern of pressures such as heat, or air pollution, and lack a wider understanding of where the beneficiaries are located and who will benefit most. We assess UGI in five cities from four continents with contrasting climate, socio-political context, and size. For three example services (air pollution removal, heat mitigation, accessible greenspace), we run an assessment that takes into account spatial patterns in the socio-economic demand for ecosystem services and develops metrics that reflect local context, drawing on the principles of vulnerability assessment. Despite similar overall levels of UGI (from 35 to 50% of urban footprint), the amount of service provided differs substantially between cities. Aggregate cooling ranged from 0.44 °C (Leicester) to 0.98 °C (Medellin), while pollution removal ranged from 488 kg PM2.5/yr (Zomba) to 48,400 kg PM2.5/yr (Dhaka). Percentage population with access to nearby greenspace ranged from 82% (Dhaka) to 100% (Zomba). The spatial patterns of pressure, of ecosystem service, and of maximum benefit within a city do not necessarily match, and this has implications for planning optimum locations for UGI in cities.

The wellbeing of disadvantaged children in low-income countries (LIC) is often compromised by a range of environmental risk factors, as well as by limited access to supports and services. The aim of this exploratory study was to understand service provision barriers for children's wellbeing in an urban informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by complementing stakeholder perspectives with a spatial method and a knowledge exchange framework. The research literature and official records informed interviews with 19 stakeholders, who identified interdisciplinary services. Visual geospatial analysis mapped services in relation to child wellbeing. These maps informed a knowledge exchange participatory workshop with 21 stakeholders, who co-produced recommendations related to child-centeredness and safety, community involvement, and accessible resources. Such a participatory approach combining stakeholder perspectives with geospatial analysis can be a useful tool in low-resource contexts.

Summary Digital technology is having a major impact on many areas of society, and there is equal opportunity for impact on science. This is particularly true in the environmental sciences as we seek to understand the complexities of the natural environment under climate change. This perspective presents the outcomes of a summit in this area, a unique cross-disciplinary gathering bringing together environmental scientists, data scientists, computer scientists, social scientists, and representatives of the creative arts. The key output of this workshop is an agreed vision in the form of a framework and associated roadmap, captured in the Windermere Accord. This accord envisions a new kind of environmental science underpinned by unprecedented amounts of data, with technological advances leading to breakthroughs in taming uncertainty and complexity, and also supporting openness, transparency, and reproducibility in science. The perspective also includes a call to build an international community working in this important area., The Bigger Picture Digital technology is having a major impact on many areas of society, and there is equal opportunity for impact on science in addressing grand scientific challenges. This is particularly true in the environmental sciences as we seek to understand the complexities of the natural environment under climate change. This perspective reports on the outcomes from a summit in this area, attended by 42 researchers selected as leading experts operating at the interface between digital technology and the environmental sciences. The key output of this workshop was the Windermere Accord, a collective statement around what is required to achieve a transformative effect through digital technology based around four key pillars of investigation, namely using technology to tame uncertainty; growing advocates and champions to enable, empower, and influence; embracing a new open and transparent style of science; and enabling integration and sophisticated treatment of feedbacks in complex environmental systems. These pillars all feed into the decision-making processes and are supported by a growing community. Looking forward, the accord also identified a pathway with particular emphasis on building an international, cross-disciplinary community to address the key challenges and achieve the real opportunities around digital technology and the environment., This perspective presents the outputs of a summit in the area of how digital technology can help us respond to the grand challenges of environmental change. The resultant Windermere Accord contains a framework and associated roadmap, envisioning a new kind of environmental science underpinned by unprecedented amounts of data, with technological advances leading to breakthroughs in taming uncertainty and complexity, and also supporting openness, transparency, and reproducibility in science.

The INTERACT-II (INTERcomparison of Aerosol and Cloud Tracking) campaign, performed at the CNR-IMAA Atmospheric Observatory (760 m a.s.l., 40.60° N, 15.72° E), aims to evaluate the performances of commercial automatic lidars and ceilometers for atmospheric aerosol profiling, through the comparison with Potenza EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar NETwork) lidars. The results of the campaign and the overall lesson learnt within INTERACT-I and INTERACT-II ACTRIS campaigns will be presented.

The potential of inexpensive Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors to be used for urban air quality monitoring has been the topic of increasing interest in the last decade. This paper discusses some of the lessons of three years of experience working with such sensors on a novel instrument platform (Small Open General purpose Sensor (SOGS)) in the measurement of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide and ozone concentrations. Analytic methods for increasing long-term accuracy of measurements are discussed, which permit nitrogen dioxide measurements with 95% confidence intervals of 20.0 μ g m − 3 and ozone precision of 26.8 μ g m − 3 , for measurements over a period one month away from calibration, averaged over 18 months of such calibrations. Beyond four months from calibration, sensor drift becomes significant, and accuracy is significantly reduced. Successful calibration schemes are discussed with the use of controlled artificial atmospheres complementing deployment on a reference weather station exposed to the elements. Manufacturing variation in the attributes of individual sensors are examined, an experiment possible due to the instrument being equipped with pairs of sensors of the same kind. Good repeatability (better than 0.7 correlation) between individual sensor elements is shown. The results from sensors that used fans to push air past an internal sensor element are compared with mounting the sensors on the outside of the enclosure, the latter design increasing effective integration time to more than a day. Finally, possible paths forward are suggested for improving the reliability of this promising sensor technology for measuring pollution in an urban environment.

Following on from the previous efforts of INTERACT (INTERcomparison of Aerosol and Cloud Tracking), the INTERACT-II campaign used multi-wavelength Raman lidar measurements to assess the performance of an automatic compact micro-pulse lidar (MiniMPL) and two ceilometers (CL51 and CS135), respectively, to provide reliable information about optical and geometric atmospheric aerosol properties. The campaign took place at the CNR-IMAA Atmospheric Observatory (760 m asl, 40.60° N, 15.72° E), in the framework of the ACTRIS-2 (Aerosol Clouds Trace gases Research InfraStructure) H2020 project. Co-located simultaneous measurements involving a MiniMPL, two ceilometers, and two EARLINET multi-wavelength Raman lidars (MUSA and PEARL) were performed from July to December 2016. Range-corrected signals (RCS) of MiniMPL showed an average difference with respect to MUSA/PEARL RCS of less than 10–15 % below 3.0 km above sea level, largely due to the use of an inaccurate overlap correction, and smaller than 5 % in the free troposphere. For the CL51, the average difference with respect to MUSA/PEARL attenuated backscatter is