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Sustainability
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Sustainable Strategies for Enhancing Urban Resilience Against Disaster Risks
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Sustainable Strategies for Enhancing Urban Resilience Against Disaster Risks

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 January 2027 | Viewed by 1495

Editors

Dr. Qiang Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
Interests: urban resilience; structural reinforcement; reliability analysis; urban disaster prevention
Prof. Dr. Lei Xu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410000, China
Interests: railway infrastructure; vehicle-track interaction; simulation; reliability analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Biao Hu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Interests: composite materials and structures; structural strengthening; durability; solid waste resource utilization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Jiann-Wen Woody Ju

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Interests: computational damage mechanics; micromechanics mechanics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In light of rapid urbanization and the growing demand for urban resilience, it has become crucial to ensure the long-term safety, stability, and reliable operation of urban systems. Natural disasters and man-made actions are considered threats that generate uncertainty. Urban areas need to respond more quickly and effectively to anticipate and mitigate potential consequences and dangers. The current state of knowledge highlights the need for a quantitative characterization and balanced regulation of disaster resilience throughout the service life of these systems. Despite significant advancements, there remain gaps in understanding the stochastic evolution behavior of urban infrastructure systems and the integration of intelligent operation and sustainable maintenance strategies. Addressing these gaps is essential for enhancing the resilience and efficiency of urban and urban infrastructure systems.

This Special Issue will focus on new theories and technologies in the field of intelligent operation and maintenance of infrastructure systems. To gather further insights into the intelligent operation and maintenance of infrastructure systems, we welcome articles addressing, themes including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Smart disaster prevention and mitigation;
  • Advanced numerical simulation of dynamic behavior of railway infrastructure;
  • Green construction and sustainable maintenance;
  • Smart planning and design.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Qiang Zhang
Prof. Dr. Lei Xu
Dr. Biao Hu
Prof. Dr. Jiann-Wen Woody Ju
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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-anonymized 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

  • sustainable strategies
  • urban resilience
  • disaster prevention and mitigation
  • risk
  • dynamic behavior
  • intelligent operation and maintenance
  • advanced numerical methods

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

26 pages, 2739 KB  
Article
Enhancing Urban Disaster Resilience for Foreign Tourists in Japan: A Smartphone-Based, SLAM-Enabled Augmented Reality System for Inclusive Flood Risk Communication
by Gowit Chanaken, Keisuke Utsu and Osamu Uchida
Sustainability 2026, 18(16), 8140; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18168140 - 10 Aug 2026
Viewed by 197
Abstract
Disaster-prone urban areas must support transient and vulnerable populations, including foreign tourists who may face language barriers and difficulty interpreting conventional 2D hazard information. This study developed a smartphone-based augmented reality (AR) system designed to support flood-risk interpretation by foreign tourists in Japan. [...] Read more.
Disaster-prone urban areas must support transient and vulnerable populations, including foreign tourists who may face language barriers and difficulty interpreting conventional 2D hazard information. This study developed a smartphone-based augmented reality (AR) system designed to support flood-risk interpretation by foreign tourists in Japan. The system integrates four live external APIs providing location, weather forecast, hazard, and designated emergency evacuation site information, and retrieves these data on demand. Its core function converts hazard map-derived flood-inundation category data into 1:1-scale AR flood visualizations using simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and inertial measurement unit (IMU) data. The system also provides a multilingual interface in English, Japanese, and Thai, weather forecast display, and nearby designated emergency evacuation site identification within a 1500 m radius. This study is positioned as a technical feasibility study. The evaluation comprised a verification of the AR height-placement mechanism against a physical reference at the five display heights used by the system, including the smallest category at 0.3 m (21.5 mm mean absolute alignment error, 1.0–2.3% of the target height); a quantitative SLAM drift evaluation under three movement patterns (at most 1.6 cm mean horizontal and 0.7 cm mean vertical drift after 180 s, within a priori thresholds); and an API response time evaluation under 5G and Wi-Fi (50 measurements per API per network; summed per-API means of approximately 3.99 s and 3.89 s at the endpoint level). The results support technical feasibility under the tested conditions, while effects on comprehension, preparedness, and evacuation decision-making remain for future user studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Strategies for Enhancing Urban Resilience Against Disaster Risks)
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31 pages, 16121 KB  
Article
Estimated Population Exposure Within Designated Hazard Zones Across Walkability-Based Urban Spatial Characteristics in Japan: A Nationwide Analysis of Postcode-Level Population Core Cells
by Keisuke Utsu and Osamu Uchida
Sustainability 2026, 18(13), 6821; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18136821 - 4 Jul 2026
Viewed by 522
Abstract
While Japan’s population is declining overall, some areas remain densely populated within designated hazard zones. Understanding how these spatial patterns vary across urban contexts is important for sustainable and resilient urban development. This study presents a nationwide analysis of hazard-specific estimated population exposure [...] Read more.
While Japan’s population is declining overall, some areas remain densely populated within designated hazard zones. Understanding how these spatial patterns vary across urban contexts is important for sustainable and resilient urban development. This study presents a nationwide analysis of hazard-specific estimated population exposure at postcode-level population core cells across walkability-based urban spatial characteristics in Japan. We integrated designated hazard-zone layers from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) with 250 m census population grids and linked the resulting dataset to the Japan Postcode-level Walkability Index using these core cells as a common spatial unit. This analysis used postcode-level population core cells and was not designed to estimate total hazard-zone-based exposure within entire postcode areas. The four hazard-zone layers were analyzed separately to characterize hazard-specific patterns, not to assess simultaneous or compound hazard events, cumulative exposure, or compound risk. Population core cells in higher-JPWI strata generally overlapped more frequently with flood, storm surge, and tsunami inundation zones, whereas lower-JPWI population core cells overlapped more frequently with designated landslide warning zones. Where hazard-zone overlap was identified, estimated exposed populations tended to be larger in higher-JPWI core cells. The pattern should be interpreted descriptively because the estimate is partly influenced by cell population and JPWI includes a population-density component. Overall, the results show hazard-specific differences in how walkability-based urban spatial characteristics coincide with hazard-zone-based estimated population exposure, providing a transparent and nationally consistent baseline for characterizing designated hazard-zone overlap and estimated exposed population at population core cells in Japan. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Strategies for Enhancing Urban Resilience Against Disaster Risks)
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