Data-Driven Approaches for Identifying Environmental Sustainability Challenges and Benefits

Dear Colleagues,

Achieving climate targets at regional, national and even global levels requires a comprehensive framework to address environmental challenges and prioritise available solutions and opportunities. A central area of environmental protection, which is also becoming increasingly important in avoiding and limiting climate change, is the transformation to a circular economy, which encompasses strategies beyond CO₂ reduction and focuses on improving product durability, reusability and repairability, and enhancing energy and resource efficiency. In this context, it seems crucial to focus on providing evidence of the environmental, social and economic consequences of poor air quality and waste management, and emphasise the related individual practices that could facilitate the process of improving environmental quality. Consumer awareness and education on energy efficiency and waste and air pollution reduction, and the adoption of environmentally friendly habits have been proven as effective strategies for promoting sustainable consumer behaviour. Moreover, exploring the social and cultural factors that shape consumer attitudes and choices towards air quality, energy efficiency, waste management and sustainability can play a significant role in determining their overall environmental impact.

In this line, this Special Issue seeks to gather insights into innovative approaches and technologies that demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the impacts and benefits of various practices related to climate change mitigation and air pollution reduction. The objective of this Special Issue is to reveal prominent approaches for modelling, estimating and forecasting environmental challenges, while measuring specific drivers and inhibitors that defy environmental sustainability. The outcome of this investigation can serve as a basis for developing strategies that could advance environmental management systems in the context of the SDGs.

This Special Issue encourages the submission of original research articles and reviews addressing, but not limited to, the following research areas:

• Energy consumption and energy-efficient solutions;
• Strategies for limiting waste and air pollution;
• Specialised approaches for individual reduction of travel emissions;
• Designing reduce–reuse–recycle habits;
• Circular economy practices that contribute to environmental sustainability;
• Citizens’ pro-environmental behaviour monitoring and modelling;
• Individual ICT use in battling air and waste pollution;
• Data management and statistical analysis of air pollution and waste management;
• Natural language processing;
• Sentiment analysis and topic modelling.

Prof. Dr. Ljupco Kocarev
Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Dedinec
Prof. Dr. Jana Prodanova
Guest Editors

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• quantitative data analyses
• machine learning
• big data
• natural language processing
• air quality
• waste management
• consumer behaviour
• circular economy
• environmental sustainability