Urban Air Mobility Solutions: UAVs for Smarter Cities
A special issue of Drones (ISSN 2504-446X). This special issue belongs to the section "Innovative Urban Mobility".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 38
Special Issue Editors
Interests: transportation innovation; UAV applications; safety; sustainability; airport
Interests: autonomous aviation; UTM, safety; aviation maintenance
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a dynamic field that has grown in interest due to advances in aircraft technologies and automation. This Special Issue will examine the many ways that autonomous aerial vehicles (AAV) can contribute to smarter cities, as well as explore potential solutions to the operational, technical, planning, and safety challenges. UAM may fulfill many functions in the smart city of the future by providing an alternative mode of transportation to congested roadways, enabled by next-generation VTOL technologies powered by clean renewable energy sources, reducing local emissions and noise. These VTOL technologies offer the potential to improve the mobility of people and cargo and may be especially useful for last-mile delivery, emergency response, and critical medical transport. Additionally, AAVs support a diverse number of technological sensor solutions, which enable real-time data collection to improve infrastructure monitoring, maintenance, and transportation efficiencies. Other opportunities may include AAVs as airborne communication nodes that may improve data connectivity, weather forecasting, and natural disaster response. Given the numerous applications and benefits, AAVs will play an important role in the smart cities of the future, redefining current business models, creating new business opportunities, and improving the lives of the public.
This special issue aims to highlight and discuss the critical issues, solutions, and opportunities related to the use of UAM and AAV technologies in the Smart Cities of the future. This aligns closely with the journal's scope of Drones, which focuses on the design and application of drones, including UAS, UAVs, and RPAS, for various use cases. Submissions should focus primarily on drones—whether aerial (such as unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs) or terrestrial (including unmanned ground vehicles or UGVs)—and their application in urban mobility. Manuscripts that broadly address urban air mobility (UAM) concepts without a significant focus on drones will not align with the section's scope.
- Economic analysis, opportunities and benefits of UAV and UAM
- Environmental benefits of UAV and UAM
- Urban policies to support UAM and UAV in urban areas
- Examples and operational models of UAM and UAV including emergency services, last-mile delivery, and routine transport of people and cargo
- Technical papers addressing operational issues, safety issues, infrastructure issues
- Workforce implications and training needs of UAV and UAM in smart cities
Dr. Sarah Hubbard
Dr. Damon Lercel
Dr. Cheng Wang
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. Drones 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 2600 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.
Keywords
- UAM
- UAV
- smart cities
- infrastructure
- safety
- funding
- public policy
- urban planning
- emergency response
- workforce
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