Smart Cities for Sustainable Development, Volume II
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 6 May 2026 | Viewed by 914
Special Issue Editor
Interests: learning (artificial intelligence); pattern classification; time series; decision-making; deep learning (artificial intelligence); diseases; electrocardiography; feature extraction; intelligent sensors; medical signal detection; medical signal processing; microcontrollers; neural nets; patient monitoring; signal
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Smart Cities concept is being evolved towards Sustainable and Resilience Cities; as an evolution of the challenges as a result of energy costs increase, overpopulation of cities since half the global population lives in cities–a figure that’s expected to rise to 80% by 2050; >7 billion people are projected to be living in urban areas, extreme weather events are driven by climate change, mobility new ecosystems, post-COVID lifestyles with the promotion of remote work; and all the new investments in the co-existence of digital, virtual and physical ecosystems.
The development of sustainable infrastructures, with a strong awareness of their impact, is crucial; current buildings account for 30% of global energy consumption and 28% of energy-related carbon emissions. City leaders must act with urgency against a worldwide pandemic, climate crisis, economic uncertainty, and budget constraints to make urban infrastructure more resilient. Markets are increasingly pressuring cities to reduce carbon emissions, respond to extreme weather events, reduce waste, and preserve natural resources while still providing critical infrastructure and resources–and citizens expect this as well, increasingly demanding greater transparency.
Digital technologies such as the Internet of Things are enablers for cities and public facilities seeking to transform into more sustainable operations while continuing to ensure functionality, comfort, safety, and efficiency. Five trends are underpinning the need for digital transformation, each of which can be met with a sustainable solution that can generate significant savings on time and cost, improve the reliability of core assets, and reduce response times and energy use:
- Connectivity with introducing service networks requires greater operational agility and resiliency as LoRa, 5G, 6G and beyond.
- Resilience funds and green deal funds to overcome this crisis with improved operational efficiency
- Digital and remote workforces, including also the automation of tasks.
- Infrastructure regeneration for mobility, urban development, waste, environment etc., to improve reliability and safety
- Sustainability focus, making net zero emissions more achievable and cost-effective.
For understanding the challenges of the economic model vs social impact and environment, we can use as a reference the "doughnut effect"; which cities as Cartagena, Murcia, Amsterdam, Brussels, Melbourne and Berlin are examples of cities joining using these models for paving the way towards social and environmental sustainability.
The theory of the Doughnut formula is a change of economic model within the means of the planet's limited natural resources. The one in the centre is the social foundation, which includes basic fundamental rights, and the outer ring is the ecological ceiling, which cannot be exceeded if we are to guarantee the prosperity of humanity.
This Special Issue aims to collect all the innovations based on technologies such as platforms, digital twins, the Internet of Things, and innovative sensors related to policies, ussssssss, best practices, experiences and resilience solutions.
Dr. Antonio J. Jara
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- Internet of Things
- air quality
- data quality
- resilience solutions
- water quality
- mobility
- low emission zones
- green deal
- data spaces for sustainability
- standards for sustainability
- urban health
- circular economy
- green cities
- regenerative cities
- sustainable development goals
- doughnut economics
- sandboxes
- testing and experimentation facilities
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
Related Special Issue
- Smart Cities for Sustainable Development in Sustainability (6 articles)
