Digital Twins for Smart Cities

Dear Colleagues,

According to both the United Nations and the World Bank Group, more than half of the global population currently lives in urban areas. Driven by the rapid growth in the rate of urbanization, cities are determined to implement advanced socio-technological changes and economic-social development inside the dynamic natural environment. Therefore, the theory and technology of Smart City are adopted to prioritize the use of advanced technologies and systems to address long-standing challenges in urban development and regeneration. As a new multidisciplinary concept, Digital Twin City or Urban Digital Twin has been introduced to the technical and managerial domains of Smart Cities, and it adopts information and communication technology (ICT) to establish a large-scale multifunctional digital module of a city in order to represent the entire built environment within an urban area over the internet. Through a systematic integration of functional modules and layers about the city, a Digital Twin City can be a useful tool to enhance professional practices on planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and governance of cities under the sustainability agenda, in addition to their services to people.

Although there are initiatives on the development and use of Digital Twin City, the theory and practice of urban digital twins are still under development. This Topical Collection aims to explore not only the theoretical development but also capabilities build on urban digital twins with regard to their contributions to Smart Cities, and welcomes papers to enrich the body of knowledge on digital twins for smart cities.

Prof. Dr. Songnian Li
Dr. Zhen Chen
Collection 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. 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 collection 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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Smart Cities 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 2000 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.