Transportation Network Modelling and Optimization for Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Urban transformations to achieve healthier, greener, and more livable cities have recently intensified, boosted by the growing awareness and eventual recognition of the urgent need to achieve sustainable cities (UN 2030 agenda). Sustainable Development Goal 11 targets sustainable mobility across scales and sectors (from people to goods).

At the city scale, air pollution, citizen health, safety and lost hours in congestion are becoming unsustainable and need to be urgently addressed: designing a more efficient and sustainable infrastructure (not only from a car-oriented perspective but considering carbon-free transport modes and active mobility), freight of goods and last-mile delivery, improving public multimodal transport, and discouraging long trips (e.g., the concept of the 15-minute city).

At the regional scale, citizens’ mobility becomes fundamental for commuting: within and across conurbations, and in the urban–rural continuum. At this scale, the transport of goods becomes increasingly relevant and needs to be modelled, optimized, and reconsidered as well. 

At the global scale, the transport of goods and citizens takes a different perspective: air and maritime transportation stands out, without disregarding heavy duty vehicles. Interestingly, the structural analysis of air and maritime routes and how they interfere greenhouse emissions, maritime ecosystems, and pollution is very limited.

Although the most debated ideas have already been conceived throughout the last century, the current availability and access to accurate and extensive data sources means that new opportunities for data-driven urban decision-making are emerging.

The aim of this Special Issue is to reframe mobility and its topological substrate by considering sustainability aspects. We expect to understand the principles of sustainability that are neglected in current models and dynamics to finally design and provide new tools in the broad spectra of sustainable transport.

From the more data-oriented perspective, data-driven sustainable transport networks require rich data sources and machine learning algorithms able to process and extract knowledge from these data sources. Presentation and preliminary analysis of new datasets are welcome as well.

Additionally, the Special Issue welcomes work blending quantitative and qualitative approaches that will help to frame and contextualize the sustainability aspects addressed within.

We expect that the joint development of transport engineering, complex systems analyses, social sciences studies, and machine learning algorithms combined with rich and interdisciplinary datasets helps our society to build up the new paradigm of sustainable transport and mobility.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Sustainable transport network modelling and descriptors;
• Sustainable urban mobility and commuting;
• Sustainable mobility across metropolitan areas;
• Public transport analysis at all scales;
• Urban mobility, safety, and their sustainable aspects;
• Pedestrian mobility and sidewalk networks;
• Personal Mobility Vehicles in urban areas;
• Effects of urban traffic in air pollution, urban noise, citizen health, etc.;
• Network perspectives in modal share;
• Urban service allocation, distribution, and optimization;
• Analysis of maritime and air transport routes (complex systems, graph theory, etc.);
• Qualitative aspects of sustainability of transport networks.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Albert Solé-Ribalta
Dr. Javier Borge-Holthoefer
Guest Editors

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• transportation network modelling
• sustainable transport
• active mobility
• sustainable modal share in cities
• mobility integration within rural areas
• air transportation
• sustainable maritime transport