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Smart Mobility for Sustainable Development

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 782

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, IRC for Smart Mobility and Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Interests: smart mobility; autonomous and connected vehicles; cognitive IoT; machine learning; combinatorial optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Center for Sustainable Mobility, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Interests: traffic flow theory; traveller and driver behaviour modelling; dynamic traffic assignment; transportation network control; optimization; use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in transportation; intelligent vehicle systems; connected and autonomous vehicles; transportation energy and environmental modelling; transportation safety modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Global population growth and the population shift from rural to urban areas, driven by social and economic needs, have resulted in several social, economic, and environmental challenges. These challenges have in turn given rise to a need for global action plans to guarantee sustainable development. The United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved in 2015 by the UN General Assembly, is an example of such an action plan to address critical areas for humanity and the planet. The agenda’s core is composed of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). These 17 SDGs and their 169 subdivided targets are interdependent and interlinked. All industries have roles to play to achieve sustainable development and mobility is no exception to that as it is critical in terms of providing access to key aspects of life such as work, education, health, shopping, and entertainment. This Special Issue addresses the roles smart mobility plays as an enabler of sustainable development as well as the barriers that need to be addressed in order for the full potential of smart mobility technology, a key enabler to achieve SDGs, to be achieved.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Smart mobility for society-related SDGs;
  • Smart mobility for environment-related SDGs;
  • Smart mobility for economy-related SDGs;
  • Smart mobility for resilience to environmental, economic, and social disasters;
  • Affordable mobility and universal basic mobility;
  • The role of smart mobility in suitable cities;
  • Smart mobility technologies for good health and well-being;
  • E-mobility in land, air, and water;
  • Sharing and gig economy-based mobility services;
  • Circular Industry 4.0 in transportation systems and services;
  • Barrier-free inclusive mobility;
  • Potential barriers.

This Special Issue seeks to foster collaboration and the exchange of knowledge by compiling a diverse collection of research articles, reviews, and perspectives from academics, technologists, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), mobility service providers, city planners, and policymakers. We welcome contributions from various disciplines to contribute their expertise and insights to this Special Issue. This collective effort will provide a comprehensive overview of the current understanding and future directions regarding the role of smart mobility systems and services in achieving sustainable development.

Dr. Alaa Khamis
Dr. Hesham A. Rakha
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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 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.

Keywords

  • smart mobility
  • sustainable mobility
  • green mobility
  • affordable mobility
  • accessible/inclusive mobility
  • sustainable development goals

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

30 pages, 7116 KiB  
Article
Day-to-Day and Within-Day Traffic Assignment Model of Heterogeneous Travelers Within the MaaS Framework
by Lingjuan Chen, Yanjing Yang, Lin Wang, Cong Xie, Lin He and Minghui Ma
Sustainability 2025, 17(7), 2983; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17072983 - 27 Mar 2025
Viewed by 357
Abstract
With the continuous advancement of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a hybrid traffic flow comprising MaaS-based and conventional trips has emerged within transportation networks, leading to diverse behaviors among heterogeneous travelers. Given the coexistence of heterogeneous travelers during the promotion of MaaS, this [...] Read more.
With the continuous advancement of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a hybrid traffic flow comprising MaaS-based and conventional trips has emerged within transportation networks, leading to diverse behaviors among heterogeneous travelers. Given the coexistence of heterogeneous travelers during the promotion of MaaS, this paper investigates two distinct groups: travelers using MaaS subscription services (defined as “subscribed users”) and traditional travelers who rely on personal experience (defined as “decentralized users”). Accordingly, we propose a day-to-day and within-day bi-level dynamic traffic assignment model for heterogeneous travelers under the MaaS framework. By optimizing subscribed users’ travel decisions, this model assists urban planners in predicting the evolution of mixed traffic flows, enabling improved road resource allocation and subscription service mechanisms. For the day-to-day component, the model explicitly incorporates mode-switching behaviors among heterogeneous travelers. In the within-day context, departure time and route choices are considered, along with travel time costs and additional costs arising from early or late arrivals. Consequently, we propose a within-day, time-dependent traffic assignment model specifically tailored for heterogeneous users. For modeling subscribed users’ traffic assignment, we develop a system-optimal (SO) bi-level programming model aiming at minimizing the total travel cost. Furthermore, by integrating an improved Genetic Algorithm with the Method of Successive Averages (MSA), we introduce an enhanced IGA-MSA hybrid algorithm to solve the proposed model. Finally, numerical experiments based on the Nguyen–Dupuis network are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed model and algorithm. The results indicate that the network with heterogeneous MaaS users can reach a steady state effectively, significantly reducing overall travel costs. Notably, decentralized users rapidly shift towards becoming subscribed users, highlighting the attractiveness of MaaS platforms in terms of cost reduction and enhanced travel experience. Additionally, the IGA-MSA hybrid algorithm effectively decreases overall travel costs in the early evolution stages and achieves a more balanced temporal distribution of trips across the system, effectively managing congestion during peak periods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Mobility for Sustainable Development)
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