Internet of Things Enabled Co-Assessment : How Equitable is IoT Air Quality Monitoring?

This article examines one form of co-assessment to enhance public services: citizen monitoring of air quality. Specifically, we look at how advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and internet of things (IoT) devices can expand the ability to study, assess, and act through hyper-local, real-time data gathering on air quality (in our case fine particulate matter or PM2.5). The cost of co-assessment in this article’s case may have bias built in and consequently exclude large segments of the population from the benefits. Decision-making based on these devices could provide inconsistent availability of information; thus, consideration of where they are deployed is an important consideration for governments. Across three different measures of co-assessment, our analysis shows that both wealth and race play a significant role in determining whether these IoT-enabled PM2.5 sensors are present and how many of them are present. However, we find that frequency of exposure to poor air quality does not predict the likelihood to have sensors deployed locally—and in fact, we find that places with better air quality are more likely to have sensors (and more of them)