Transportation and Traffic Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

Against the backdrop of accelerated social progress and rapid technological innovation, the transportation industry is undergoing a profound transformation driven by digitization, intelligence, and sustainable development. To address escalating transportation demands and meet the goals of higher service quality, operational efficiency, and reduced carbon emissions, it is imperative to leverage advanced computational methodologies—particularly algorithmic innovation in artificial intelligence, optimization, data analytics, and autonomous systems—to reshape traditional transportation frameworks.

This Special Issue, “Transportation and Traffic Engineering”, aims to build a high-level academic exchange platform for researchers, industry practitioners, and regulatory authorities worldwide. Integrating algorithmic theory with practical engineering, this issue adopts an interdisciplinary and forward-looking perspective, covering a broad spectrum of transportation domains including aviation, maritime, rail, and low-altitude traffic. It converges expertise from control engineering, machine learning, optimization theory, navigation technology, policy formulation, urban planning, and environmental science to present comprehensive insights into the latest theoretical advancements, algorithmic breakthroughs, and practical engineering solutions.

Interested topics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Algorithmic foundations of intelligent transportation systems, including routing algorithms, scheduling optimization, multi-agent coordination, and large-scale traffic flow computation;
• Autonomous transportation systems (autonomous ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, self-driving vehicles): decision-making algorithms, perception and sensor fusion methods, cooperative control algorithms, and human–machine interaction modeling;
• Low-altitude traffic safety and management, including airspace allocation algorithms, real-time deconfliction models, infrastructure coordination, and algorithmic emergency response frameworks;
• Sustainable aviation transportation, including flight trajectory optimization, air traffic flow management algorithms, and data-driven approaches to balancing scalability, efficiency, and environmental impact;
• Maritime traffic engineering, including ship navigation algorithms, collision-avoidance models, multi-ship collaborative decision-making, and compliance automation with COLREGs/MASS frameworks;
• Traffic safety, risk assessment, and early-warning systems, such as predictive modeling, anomaly detection algorithms, probabilistic risk forecasting, and emergency response optimization;
• Green and low-carbon transportation technologies, including energy-efficient routing, electric vehicle charging optimization, alternative energy utilization planning, and environmental impact assessment algorithms.

Prof. Dr. Yong Ma
Prof. Dr. Roberto Montemanni
Guest Editors

Dr. Yujiao Zhao
Guest Editor Assistant

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. Algorithms is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1800 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.