Sustainable Smart Cities: Building New Services and Products with Digital Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

All over the world, citizens, as actors in building cities to face current and future environmental, economic, and social challenges, have created increasing pressure on governments and the private sector to ensure greater investment in efficient and fair resource management and policies. This pressure has triggered several initiatives for the development of sustainable smart cities. In this regard, the continuous growth of digital technologies has contributed to the development of innovative products and services. New technological solutions have allowed cities to undergo profound and intelligent transformations, aimed at creating value-added products and services for their fellow citizens. In other words, the use of digital technologies has been of significant help in finding solutions to the environmental, political, economic, and social challenges of developed urban societies. Some of these challenges are related to issues arising from demographic fluctuations (i.e., population growth), environmental issues, resource scarcity, and financial or epidemiological crises. Therefore, the development of sustainable smart cities ends up being driven by the use of smart services and products that often make use of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technologies. Despite advances in the development of intelligent AI-based products and services, and robotic solutions to respond to the needs and expectations of people, there is still a long way to go to tackle new contemporary challenges (e.g., COVID-19). It is in this regard that this Special Issue features original research articles focusing on sustainable smart cities that enable scholars, public servants, and business managers to respond to new and exciting challenges.

Dr. João Reis
Dr. Diana Jorge
Dr. Joana Costa
Guest Editors

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