ABSTRACT
Air quality is an abstract term referring to the air pollution levels in the context of exposure to humans. However, a more generalised scope of air quality also includes the levels of air pollutant exposure to buildings, crops, vegetation, and so on. Ambient refers to a criterion (or standard) relating to the immediate outdoor (or indoor) surroundings. Ambient air quality varies greatly from place to place at any one time, and with the time of day and from year to year at any one place. This is the result of the rapid variations in the pollutant concentrations in response to these changes. Improving air quality undoubtedly is a difficult undertaking as both understanding the causes and the potential solutions to the problem are complex. Before we can understand where and when the concentrations of hazardous air pollutants rise to unacceptable levels, we need to have an extended period of data available from a network of pollution monitors having appropriate spatial distribution and response time. The UK Air Information Resource (UK-AIR) releases live air pollution data from continuous monitoring stations, reported on the National Air Quality website at www.airquality.co.uk. However, given the nature of diffused air pollutant contributions from varied sources, recent calls have emphasised adopting a twin approach where local air quality strategies and initiatives are combined with initiatives at a national level (Tiwary et al., 2014). This is further augmented by involving citizen-based initiatives in deploying diffused miniature sensors for enhanced online monitoring of air quality at human exposure scales.
