Smart Technologies and Digital Methods for Advanced Environmental Remediation

Dear Colleagues,

We set up a Special Issue named ‘Smart Technologies and Digital Methods for Advanced Environmental Remediation’, which centers on the integration of modern digital tools with innovative remediation practices to address a broad range of environmental contaminants. Its focus is to highlight how emerging technologies—such as advanced sensing platforms, machine learning, geospatial analytics, simulation models, and automated monitoring systems—can enhance the detection, assessment, and restoration of degraded soils, waters, sediments, and ecosystems. By bringing together digital innovation and environmental problem-solving, the Issue emphasizes new opportunities to support more precise, efficient, and adaptive remediation outcomes.

The scope of this Special Issue includes research articles, methodological advances, field applications, case studies, and comprehensive reviews that combine computational or data-driven techniques with biological, physicochemical, or integrated remediation strategies. Relevant contributions may cover the use of remote sensing and the Geographic Information System (GIS) to map contaminants, predictive modeling, and machine learning to forecast remediation performance, digital twins and simulation frameworks to evaluate treatment scenarios, and sensor-based networks or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems for real-time monitoring. Studies may address a wide array of pollutants—including heavy metals, Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS), hydrocarbons, pesticide residues, nutrient enrichment, and emerging contaminants—across agricultural, urban, industrial, and natural environments. Work demonstrating improvements in sustainability, cost-effectiveness, or field-scale remediation efficiency is especially encouraged. The overarching purpose is to create a multidisciplinary platform that unites environmental scientists, engineers, ecologists, technologists, and data analysts to explore how digital tools can fundamentally advance the practice of environmental remediation.

This Special Issue will meaningfully supplement the existing literature by bridging two historically parallel fields: environmental remediation research, which has traditionally focused on biological and chemical treatment mechanisms, and the rapidly expanding digital and computational sciences, which have largely been applied to environmental monitoring rather than active remediation. By bringing these domains together, the Issue will demonstrate how digital innovations can guide treatment decisions, enhance contaminant detection accuracy, accelerate remediation timelines, and support long-term ecological resilience. Ultimately, it will help define a new frontier of advanced, data-enabled environmental remediation.

Prof. Dr. Bo Hu
Dr. Yuanhang Zhan
Dr. Lang Qiao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 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.