Data Science Applications for Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable Development has been among the rapidly-growing research areas in recent years. Over the last three decades, the international community has been facing severe environmental and social challenges related to climate change and corporate social responsibility. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that during the past two decades, there has been a significant increase of awareness of the need to reduce the impact of industrial activities that harm society and the environment. However, dealing with sustainability challenges is becoming increasingly complex and costly for both businesses and communities. Hence, organisations have realised that to respond effectively to these challenges, a shift in their management approaches is inevitable. Analytics has always shown great potential in analysing large data sets as well as complex systems. The availability of data and improvements in computational power have boosted the use of analytics tools and techniques in academia and industry. Such a growing trend is also observed in AI-related studies, especially in the areas of manufacturing, business, and healthcare. AI & analytics techniques and cutting edge technologies could provide significant insights in coping with the uncertainty associated with sustainability. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the role that analytics techniques can play towards achieving economic, environmental, and social sustainability. This Special Issue calls for high quality, up-to-date technologies and techniques related to analytics and Artificial Intelligence for sustainability and aims to serve as a medium for researchers all over the world to discuss their works and recent advances in this field. Both theoretical studies and state-of-the-art practical applications are welcome for submission. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed and selected based on both their quality and their relevance to the theme of this Special Issue.

The list of possible topics includes, but is not limited to:

• Big Data Analytics for Sustainability Issues
• Data science for sustainable operations management
• Machine Learning & AI for Sustainability Analytics
• Simulation for Sustainability Analytics
• IoT Analytics for Social and Environmental Sustainability
• Analytics for sustainable cities and urban planning
• Analytics for green logistics and sustainable supply chain management
• Business Analytics for circular business and sustainable innovation
• Analytics for green energy transformation
• Data Science for Sustainable Industry 4.0

Recent advances in big data and analytics have also generated a growing interest amongst the research and academic communities in the use of such methods to promote and foster sustainability. This Special Issue attempts to complement and document the past and current efforts in this field, and in particular it aims to take stock of the current state-of the-art in the application of data, analytics and AI across the diverse economic and social domains, to showcase best practices, to forge new paths in future research, and to highlight the potential impact of such approaches to sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Lampros K. Stergioulas
Dr. Masoud Fakhimi
Dr. Xiao Peng
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.

• data analytics
• data science
• business analytics
• AI
• sustainability
• modelling
• sustainable supply chains
• industry 4.0