Smart Cities—Toward Mitigating Climate Change, Preventing Soil Contamination and Improving Soil Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

Smart Cities are modern approaches to urban development that aim to enhance the well-being of city residents. In the face of climate change and expanding urbanization, these innovative approaches are urgently needed. Smart City designs can be achieved by using local resources and synergy between various city sectors, which rely on networks of materials and services to make cities more adaptable and resilient. This innovative mode of city management includes a range of emerging technologies. Here, we focus on the development of public green infrastructures that meet modern cities' needs, including green walking paths, stormwater purification and infiltration, social cohesion, and carbon storage.

However, green infrastructures may be spatially constrained and subject to various stressors in cities. Adapting smart engineering design, such as constructed soils, for green infrastructure allows for the maximization of expected ecosystem services while replacing limited resources like soil. Intelligent design of constructed soils needs to meet specific cities' requirements while still functioning and preventing potential future contamination.

Identifying the quality of existing green infrastructure in cities, like parks and urban forests, can be very useful. It involves experts in soil science, landscape design, and urban architecture working together to plan and implement changes that improve the infrastructure's quality while also enhancing its potential for providing ecosystem services and preventing degradation.

To implement a decision support system that is designed to assist the territory developer or contracting authority in managing water and soil resources through a digital twin of the targeted area, a living lab, and multistakeholder participatory approaches will be required.

Topics of interest:

• Designing sustainable soils using locally available materials.
• Constructed soils for stormwater management systems.
• Building resilient green infrastructure systems.
• Adapting to the impacts of climate change with constructed soils.
• Designing city soils to store carbon and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
• Circular economy and sustainability of reuse of urban waste for varieties of soil functions.
• Researcher and agency partnerships and protocols.
• Urban soil mapping and diagnostic of their quality.
• Improve urban soil qualities.
• Create models of urban cities in order to identify the best locations and conductivity of green infrastructure.

Dr. Maha Deeb
Dr. S. Perl Egendorf
Dr. Olivier Fouché-Grobla
Guest Editors

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