Autonomous and Intelligent Urban Mobility: Usage, Socioeconomic Impacts, and System-Level Innovations for Sustainable Cities

A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Mobility and Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2027 | Viewed by 178

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
VEDECOM Institute, Versailles, France
Interests: autonomous vehicles; usage patterns; travel behavior; socioeconomic assessment; resiliency; demand modelling; simulation

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
VEDECOM Institute, Versailles, France
Interests: optimization; artificial intelligence; deep learning; mathematical modelling; autonomous vehicles; connectivity; image sensing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Autonomous mobility is transforming urban transportation by reshaping usage patterns, operating models, and interactions between modes. The growth of autonomous vehicles, shared mobility, and smart mobility platforms offers new opportunities to reduce environmental impacts, improve accessibility, and strengthen the resilience of urban networks. These developments are driven by advances in perception, sensor fusion, and image-based sensing, which enable autonomous systems to operate more reliably in complex urban environments. 

This transition raises important questions about user acceptance, behavioral adaptation, socioeconomic impacts, equity, safety, and the integration of emerging modes into existing intermodal systems. It also increases the need for advanced modelling, optimization methods, and scenario-based simulations to support policy and planning decisions. 

This Special Issue welcomes contributions on topics including:

– Usage patterns, user behavior, trust, and acceptance of autonomous and shared mobility;

– Socioeconomic, equity, and distributional impacts of automation and digital mobility services;

– Resilience, safety, and sustainability assessments of autonomous and multimodal systems;

– Integration of autonomous fleets within shared mobility and MaaS platforms;

– Perception, sensor fusion, and image sensing supporting autonomous decision-making;

– Modelling, optimization, and simulation for planning future urban mobility. 

The objective is to gather interdisciplinary insights to guide the sustainable and balanced deployment of autonomous and intelligent mobility in cities. 

We invite you to submit your work to our Special Issue “Autonomous and Intelligent Urban Mobility: Usage, Socioeconomic Impacts, and System-Level Innovations for Sustainable Cities.” 

We welcome contributions on autonomous mobility, shared and smart mobility, user behavior, socioeconomic impacts, safety and resilience, intermodal integration, perception and image sensing, as well as modelling and simulation of future mobility systems. 

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to showcasing new insights on the sustainable evolution of urban mobility. 

Dr. Jaâfar Berrada
Dr. Mohamed-Cherif Rahal
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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1800 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

  • autonomous mobility
  • shared mobility
  • smart mobility
  • image sensing and sensor fusion
  • travel behavior
  • acceptance
  • multimodal integration
  • simulation

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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