Spatial Optimization for Sustainable Resource Management

Dear Colleagues,

In the context of today’s constantly increasing ecological, social, and economic demands, spatial planning and management have become central activities to embrace multiple objectives and constraints of varying nature and importance. Spatial optimization is the most prominent resource planning and management tool. It provides effective methods to support intensive and economical use of resources for sustainable development. One of the more well-known tasks of spatial optimization is determining optimal land use patterns and allocating different uses and resources to specific areas on the basis of physical properties and regional socio-economic conditions and needs. This challenging management activity leads to highly complex mathematical optimization problems that become even less tractable as the problem size increases. Spatial optimization problems have special characteristics, such as the interplay between local and global attributes, which require specialized solution approaches. 

This has led to the use of advanced global optimization methods, including evolutionary algorithms and various heuristics, for effective treatment of these problems. A wide range of methods have been applied, such as genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, stochastic and simulated evolution, self-organization, extremal optimization, harmony search, and ant colony optimization. Further develpments in these methods are still expected. 

Resource management is tightly connected to space, and sustainability adds many objectives and constraints to these problems. The role of data handling in spatial resource management adds another challenge, especially in the context of data science. 

The present Special Issue invites articles both in regard to methodology and applications of spatial optimization, in an effort to discuss the creative interaction between these two aspects.

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.

• spatial optimization
• heuristics
• genetic algorithms
• resource management
• sustainability