Dear Colleagues,

Increasing urbanization, changing climate conditions with exacerbated extreme events, resource availability, and evolving societies and lifestyles play a key role in shaping current and future resource planning and management challenges in cities. Among the critical infrastructures and networks serving our cities, urban water and energy systems are strongly interconnected. Their nexus emerges at various scales: from single households and buildings—where water-related energy is mainly used to heat water and water and energy demands depend on individuals' behaviors—to the city scale—where energy is needed across all the phases of the integrated water cycle, from water collection and treatment, to drinking water distribution, wastewater treatment, reuse, and stormwater management.

State-of-the-art research has advanced our knowledge and ability to quantify the water–energy nexus in urban systems. Moreover, recent technological development and the deployment of intelligent meters and distributed sensor networks, coupled with increasing high-resolution data availability and data-learning techniques, are fostering the development of data-driven models to investigate urban water and energy demand patterns and use behaviors at various scales. Yet, understanding how water and energy demand and supply can be better managed individually or in coordination, under heterogeneous future demands, climate, and policy scenarios to benefit the urban metabolism, still poses several sustainability questions.

We encourage contributions proposing new technologies, policies, and management strategies for enhanced sustainability of water and energy systems in urbanized contexts, with a focus on (i) multi-scale analysis and decision making, (ii) intersectoral links and coordinated management, (iii) changing and uncertain future scenarios, and (iv) behavioral aspects. Novel concepts and applications could belong to one or more areas of urban water and energy systems modelling and sustainable management, including the optimization of water and energy supply and demand, digital utility and multi-utility transformation, distributed sensors and intelligent metering systems, information extraction, descriptive and predictive modelling, real-time management, behavioral modelling and citizens' awareness, resources conservation, nature-based water management, and water reuse.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Cominola
Prof. Dr. Ashlynn Stillwell
Guest Editors

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• Urban water and energy sustainability
• Digital utility transformation
• Water–energy nexus
• Energy and water policies
• Smart grids
• Smart cities
• Resources conservation
• Demand-side management
• Intelligent water and energy networks
• Optimization of urban water and energy systems