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27 pages, 8179 KB  
Article
DINOv3-PEFT: A Dual-Branch Collaborative Network with Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Precise Road Segmentation in SAR Imagery
by Debao Chen, Wanlin Yang, Ye Yuan and Juntao Gu
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 973; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18070973 (registering DOI) - 24 Mar 2026
Abstract
Extracting road networks from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data represents a core challenge in remote sensing scene analysis, particularly for applications in traffic monitoring and emergency management. The task is complicated by several inherent limitations: speckle noise degrades image quality, geometric distortions arise [...] Read more.
Extracting road networks from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data represents a core challenge in remote sensing scene analysis, particularly for applications in traffic monitoring and emergency management. The task is complicated by several inherent limitations: speckle noise degrades image quality, geometric distortions arise from the side-looking acquisition geometry, and roads often exhibit weak radiometric separation from surrounding terrain. Traditional processing pipelines and recent single-branch deep learning frameworks have shown insufficient performance when global contextual reasoning and fine-scale spatial detail must both be addressed. This work presents DINOv3-PEFT, a parameter-efficient dual-encoder network designed specifically for SAR road segmentation. The architecture employs two complementary processing streams tailored to SAR characteristics: one stream utilizes adapter-based fine-tuning applied to pre-trained DINOv3 weights (kept frozen), which captures long-distance spatial relationships crucial for maintaining network connectivity despite speckle corruption. The second stream, based on convolutional operations, focuses on extracting localized geometric features that preserve the narrow, elongated structure and sharp boundaries typical of road infrastructure. Feature fusion occurs through the Topological-Geometric Feature Integration (TGFI) Module, which synthesizes multi-scale representations hierarchically. This mechanism proves effective at bridging fragmented road segments and recovering geometric accuracy in scenarios with heavy shadow casting or signal interference. Performance evaluation on the GF-3 satellite dataset across four spatial resolutions (1 m, 3 m, 5 m, and 10 m) demonstrates the proposed method achieves an 82.61% F1-score, a 76.51% IoU, and a 98.08% overall accuracy, all averaged across the four resolutions. When benchmarked against six state-of-the-art methods, DINOv3-PEFT demonstrates substantial improvements in road class segmentation quality and topological connectivity preservation, supporting its robustness for operational SAR road mapping tasks. Full article
20 pages, 6053 KB  
Article
A Gain-Modulated Max Pressure Control for Port Collection and Distribution Road Networks
by Yifei Mao, Tunan Xu, Nuojia Pan, Weijie Chen, Hang Yang, Manel Grifoll, Markos Papageorgiou and Pengjun Zheng
Systems 2026, 14(3), 332; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems14030332 - 23 Mar 2026
Abstract
Freight-dominant port collection and distribution road networks exhibit strong spatial congestion, early spillback, and heterogeneous vehicle dynamics that challenge conventional traffic signal control strategies. Although Max-Pressure (MP) signal control provides strong decentralized stability properties, its classical queue-based formulation lacks sensitivity to incipient spatial [...] Read more.
Freight-dominant port collection and distribution road networks exhibit strong spatial congestion, early spillback, and heterogeneous vehicle dynamics that challenge conventional traffic signal control strategies. Although Max-Pressure (MP) signal control provides strong decentralized stability properties, its classical queue-based formulation lacks sensitivity to incipient spatial congestion and performs poorly when heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) dominate traffic composition. This paper proposes a gain-modulated Max-Pressure (Gain-MP) control framework, in which conventional pressure computation is augmented by an occupancy-dependent feedback gain that dynamically adjusts phase priorities according to real-time spatial congestion states and current right-of-way conditions. Without altering the decentralized structure of MP, the proposed method introduces a nonlinear feedback mechanism that enhances system responsiveness to congestion formation while suppressing excessive phase switching. The approach is evaluated using microscopic simulation on a signalized grid network representing port access corridors under time-varying demand and high HDV penetration. Results demonstrate that the dynamic Gain-MP controller performs better than classical queue-based MP, PCU-weighted MP, and fixed-time control. Moreover, constant-demand experiments indicate that the dynamic Gain-MP controller maintains bounded vehicle accumulation over a wider empirical demand range than the benchmark MP-based methods under the tested settings. Full article
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24 pages, 3066 KB  
Article
Enhancing Network Traffic Monitoring Through eXplainable Artificial Intelligence Methodologies
by Cătălin-Eugen Bucur, Georgiana Crihan, Anamaria Rădoi, Elena-Grațiela Robe-Voinea and Iustin-Nicolae Moroșan
Telecom 2026, 7(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/telecom7020034 - 23 Mar 2026
Abstract
In the contemporary digital landscape, AI (Artificial Intelligence) emerged as a pivotal tool in enhancing the defense technologies developed across the entire network infrastructure. As reliance on AI-based decision-making grew, so did the imperative need for interpretability, transparency, and trustworthiness, leading to the [...] Read more.
In the contemporary digital landscape, AI (Artificial Intelligence) emerged as a pivotal tool in enhancing the defense technologies developed across the entire network infrastructure. As reliance on AI-based decision-making grew, so did the imperative need for interpretability, transparency, and trustworthiness, leading to the development and integration of XAI (eXplainable Artificial Intelligence). This research paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art in XAI approaches that can be effectively implemented for network traffic monitoring, especially in critical digital infrastructures. The main contribution of this research article consists of the comparative analysis of the XAI SHAP (Shapley Additive Explanation) method applied to different datasets obtained from real-time network traffic monitoring, utilizing several representative parameters, which demonstrates the performance, vulnerabilities, and limitations of the proposed method, and also the security implications of the system resources from a cybersecurity perspective. Experimental results show that Ethernet networks offer higher predictability and clearer decision boundaries. Consequently, they are a safer solution for deployment in sensitive network architectures. In contrast, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Wi-Fi environments exhibit greater randomness. Full article
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31 pages, 42010 KB  
Article
SMS Fiber-Optic Sensing System for Real-Time Train Detection and Railway Monitoring
by Waleska Feitoza de Oliveira, Luana Samara Paulino Maia, João Isaac Silva Miranda, Alan Robson da Silva, Aedo Braga Silveira, Dayse Gonçalves Correia Bandeira, Antonio Sergio Bezerra Sombra and Glendo de Freitas Guimarães
Photonics 2026, 13(3), 308; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics13030308 - 23 Mar 2026
Abstract
Railway traffic monitoring requires robust detection technologies capable of operating reliably under real-world vibration and environmental conditions. In this work, we present the design and validation of an optical vibration sensor based on a Single-mode–Multimode–Single-mode (SMS) fiber structure for Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) [...] Read more.
Railway traffic monitoring requires robust detection technologies capable of operating reliably under real-world vibration and environmental conditions. In this work, we present the design and validation of an optical vibration sensor based on a Single-mode–Multimode–Single-mode (SMS) fiber structure for Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) detection. The sensing mechanism relies on multimodal interference in the multimode fiber (MMF), where rail-induced vibrations modify the guided mode distribution and, consequently, the transmitted optical intensity. The optical signal is converted to voltage and processed through an embedded acquisition system. Additionally, we conducted tests with freight trains and maintenance trains in order to evaluate the applicability of the sensor in other types of trains besides the LRV. We conducted laboratory experiments to assess mechanical stability, sensibility, and packaging strategies, followed by supervised field tests on an operational LRV line. The recorded time-domain signal exhibited clear modulation during train passage, and first-derivative and sliding-window variance analyses were applied to reliably identify vibration events, even in the presence of slow baseline drift. In addition, frequency-domain analysis was performed by applying the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to the measured signal, enabling the identification of characteristic low-frequency spectral components induced by train passage. A quantitative sensitivity assessment was further carried out by correlating the integrated spectral energy (0–12 Hz) with vehicle weight, yielding a linear response with a sensitivity of 0.0017 a.u./t and coefficient of determination R2=0.933. The proposed solution demonstrated stable operation using commercially available low-cost components, confirming the feasibility of SMS-based optical sensing for railway monitoring. These results indicate strong potential for future deployment in traffic safety systems and distributed sensing networks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Optical Fiber Sensing Technology: 2nd Edition)
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16 pages, 729 KB  
Article
Mamba-Based Macro–MicroSpatio-Temporal Model for Traffic Flow Prediction
by Haoning Lv, Fayang Lan and Weijie Xiu
Electronics 2026, 15(6), 1327; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15061327 - 23 Mar 2026
Abstract
Traffic flow prediction plays an important role in intelligent transportation systems. However, accurately modeling traffic dynamics remains challenging due to complex temporal correlations and spatial interactions across road networks. In this work, we propose a Mamba-based macro–micro spatio-temporal model for traffic flow prediction. [...] Read more.
Traffic flow prediction plays an important role in intelligent transportation systems. However, accurately modeling traffic dynamics remains challenging due to complex temporal correlations and spatial interactions across road networks. In this work, we propose a Mamba-based macro–micro spatio-temporal model for traffic flow prediction. Unlike graph-based approaches that rely on predefined adjacency matrices to model spatial relationships, our method treats sensor nodes as sequence elements and applies Mamba blocks along the spatial dimension. Through the global receptive field of the structured state space model, spatial dependencies are implicitly learned without requiring explicit graph structures. The proposed architecture consists of stacked spatio-temporal blocks, each composed of two Macro Feature Blocks and one Micro Feature Block. The Macro Feature Blocks are designed to capture global temporal dependencies and spatial interactions across all nodes, while the Micro Feature Block focuses on modeling localized spatio-temporal patterns at a finer granularity. By applying structured state space modeling along both temporal and spatial dimensions, the model is able to capture long-range temporal dependencies and global spatial correlations without relying on explicit graph structures. Experiments conducted on four real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed model achieves competitive or improved performance compared with existing baseline methods under standard evaluation metrics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue AI Innovations in Smart Transportation)
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21 pages, 19468 KB  
Article
Comparative Study of Four Hybrid Spatiotemporal Models for Daily PM2.5 Prediction in the Chengdu–Chongqing Region
by Bin Hu, Ling Zeng and Haiming Fan
Sustainability 2026, 18(6), 3126; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18063126 - 23 Mar 2026
Abstract
The Chengdu–Chongqing Twin-City Economic Circle (CC-TCEC), located in the Sichuan Basin, frequently experiences persistent winter PM2.5 pollution due to basin-constrained ventilation and strong meteorology–emission coupling. Using daily PM2.5 observations from 113 monitoring stations with a strict two-year training and one-year testing [...] Read more.
The Chengdu–Chongqing Twin-City Economic Circle (CC-TCEC), located in the Sichuan Basin, frequently experiences persistent winter PM2.5 pollution due to basin-constrained ventilation and strong meteorology–emission coupling. Using daily PM2.5 observations from 113 monitoring stations with a strict two-year training and one-year testing split, we develop hybrid spatiotemporal forecasting models that couple a graph neural network (GCN/GAT) for inter-station spatial dependence learning with a temporal backbone (LSTM/Transformer) for evolving concentration dynamics. We adopt a rolling one-day-ahead forecasting scheme using a 7-day look-back window. Across 12-month, 6-month, and 3-month evaluation windows, the meteorology-augmented Multi-GAT-Transformer shows a slight but consistent advantage over the other tested variants, suggesting potential benefits of attention-based spatial weighting and long-range temporal self-attention under nonstationary basin pollution regimes. Spatiotemporal mappings derived from the best-performing configuration suggest that elevated winter PM2.5 is mainly associated with low-lying areas such as the Chengdu Plain, industry clusters, and dense urban cores, with peaks that also coincide with the New Year and the pre-Lunar New Year period, suggesting a possible contribution from elevated traffic and production activity. These impacts are amplified by winter stagnation (low winds, high humidity, limited precipitation). From a policy perspective, the results support sustainability-oriented winter haze management by enabling early episode warning and hotspot prioritization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Air, Climate Change and Sustainability)
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26 pages, 3721 KB  
Article
Column-Wise Autoencoder Representation Learning for Intrusion Detection in Multi-MEC Edge Networks
by Min-Gyu Kim and Jonghyun Kim
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(6), 3055; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16063055 - 21 Mar 2026
Viewed by 23
Abstract
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is a key enabler of 5G/6G services, but multi-base-station deployment enlarges the attack surface and motivates edge-native intrusion detection systems (IDSs). Existing MEC-based IDSs are mainly single-node or centralized, which struggle with heterogeneous traffic across next-generation Node Bs (gNBs) [...] Read more.
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is a key enabler of 5G/6G services, but multi-base-station deployment enlarges the attack surface and motivates edge-native intrusion detection systems (IDSs). Existing MEC-based IDSs are mainly single-node or centralized, which struggle with heterogeneous traffic across next-generation Node Bs (gNBs) and incur latency and network load due to data aggregation. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a Column-Wise Autoencoder Ensemble (CW-AE) distributed learning framework for multi-MEC environments. Each MEC node trains column-wise autoencoder encoders locally to extract compact latent features, and a master MEC trains a stacking-based meta-classifier using concatenated latent features, avoiding raw traffic transfer and parameter averaging. By preserving node-specific behavior while integrating heterogeneous features, CW-AE improves detection performance and reduces communication overhead. Using the real-world 5G-NIDD dataset collected from two physical 5G base stations, we compare local single-node, centralized, and CW-AE-based distributed learning. The results show that CW-AE achieves superior detection capability and network efficiency, making it suitable for scalable edge IDS deployments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue AI-Enabled Next-Generation Computing and Its Applications)
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26 pages, 5758 KB  
Article
Analyzing Emergency Service Performance and Fastest Rescue Routes to Vulnerable Population Places Under Compound Pluvial Flooding and Traffic Congestion
by Fan Yi, Hao Jia, Chengyu Liang, Qifei Zhang, Yanmei Wang, Yafei Wang and Hui Zhang
Water 2026, 18(6), 736; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18060736 - 20 Mar 2026
Viewed by 71
Abstract
The combined impacts of urban pluvial flooding and traffic congestion can severely delay emergency response. However, existing studies often focus on isolated scenarios, failing to systematically quantify the reduction in overall service capability and specific route disruptions to critical functional nodes under compound [...] Read more.
The combined impacts of urban pluvial flooding and traffic congestion can severely delay emergency response. However, existing studies often focus on isolated scenarios, failing to systematically quantify the reduction in overall service capability and specific route disruptions to critical functional nodes under compound hazards. To address this problem, this study proposes a three-tier analytical framework to systematically evaluate the resilience of emergency services under compound hazards. The framework first utilizes spatial network analysis to simulate the overall spatial evolution of service capabilities for Emergency Medical Service (EMS) and Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) across various return periods and traffic conditions. It then delves into the emergency response coverage for vulnerable population places. Finally, the fastest-route analysis is employed to identify variations in rescue routing. The study reveals several critical insights. (1) As rainfall intensity and traffic congestion intensify, the coverage areas of EMS and FRS exhibit significant contraction and boundary erosion. Notably, the service areas of FRS show a distinct fragmentation pattern. (2) The protection levels for vulnerable population places (e.g., kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, and nursing homes) show a pronounced stepwise decline. Under extreme rainfall and the heaviest congestion, the 5 min coverage for these sites drops from 89.9% to 23.6% for EMS, and from 72.4% to only 15.1% for FRS, revealing a severe risk exposure for vulnerable groups. (3) Road inundation leads to a substantial extension of rescue routes and even results in the complete isolation of 141 primary and secondary schools. Overall, the framework provides actionable decision support to enhance urban emergency response under compound hazards. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water-Related Disaster Assessments and Prevention)
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24 pages, 11701 KB  
Article
MRLA: A Multi-Scale Time-Frequency Representation Learning Model with Lightweight Attention for Network Traffic Anomaly Detection
by Haoran Liu, Ke Guo, Yan Li, Shaohua Wang, Jun Yao and Zi Wang
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(6), 3008; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16063008 - 20 Mar 2026
Viewed by 22
Abstract
As cyberattacks grow increasingly diverse and sophisticated, achieving accurate yet efficient network traffic anomaly detection has become a fundamental challenge in modern cybersecurity. While existing machine learning methods enable effective feature extraction, they remain limited in jointly modeling multi-scale temporal dynamics and frequency-domain [...] Read more.
As cyberattacks grow increasingly diverse and sophisticated, achieving accurate yet efficient network traffic anomaly detection has become a fundamental challenge in modern cybersecurity. While existing machine learning methods enable effective feature extraction, they remain limited in jointly modeling multi-scale temporal dynamics and frequency-domain characteristics of anomalous network behaviors, and typically incur substantial computational overhead when processing long traffic sequences. These limitations hinder their effectiveness in real large-scale deployments. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a Multi-scale time-frequency Representation learning and Lightweight Attention (MRLA)-based model, which unifies hierarchical time and frequency feature learning with efficient long-range dependency modeling. Extensive experiments on the CIC-IDS2018, CIC-DDoS2019, and UNSW-NB15 datasets with session-aware data splits demonstrate that MRLA achieves F1-scores of 99.94%, 99.78%, and 93.74%, respectively. These results indicate that MRLA consistently delivers high detection accuracy with improved computational efficiency, offering a robust and scalable solution for network traffic anomaly detection across diverse attacks. Full article
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19 pages, 567 KB  
Article
Online Point-of-Interest Recommendations in Data Streams
by Giannis Christoforidis and Apostolos N. Papadopoulos
Computation 2026, 14(3), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/computation14030073 - 20 Mar 2026
Viewed by 18
Abstract
In recent years, social networks have shown a great influx of new users and traffic. As their popularity grows, so does the interest in researching ways to process the information available, in order to produce useful knowledge. One direction is making personalized recommendations [...] Read more.
In recent years, social networks have shown a great influx of new users and traffic. As their popularity grows, so does the interest in researching ways to process the information available, in order to produce useful knowledge. One direction is making personalized recommendations based on users’ preferences and on their social behavior and related characteristics in general. Static recommendations, however, are proven to be highly inaccurate, since as time progresses, people tend to change their preferences, making different decisions than the ones predicted previously. This calls for an adaptive algorithm that shifts according to the changes in preferences and habits of the users. Handling the stream of information is challenging, as the new data can severely change the recommendations to many users. In this work, we propose a novel streaming Point-of-Interest recommendation algorithm that explicitly incorporates location-aware features into its dynamic update mechanism, enabling continuous adaptation to newly arriving data. The proposed approach is experimentally evaluated based on real-life data sets containing the network structure as well as check-in information. The results demonstrate high accuracy, achieving at the same time significant performance gains with respect to runtime costs compared to conventional approaches. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Social Science and Complex Systems—2nd Edition)
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56 pages, 4081 KB  
Article
A Systematic Ablation Study of GAN-Based Minority Augmentation for Intrusion Detection on UWF-ZeekData22
by Asfaw Debelie, Sikha S. Bagui, Subhash C. Bagui and Dustin Mink
Electronics 2026, 15(6), 1291; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15061291 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 27
Abstract
Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are increasingly applied to mitigate extreme class imbalance in intrusion detection systems, yet reported improvements often obscure role augmentation intensity and adversarial stability. This paper presents a controlled ablation study that isolates the impact of adversarial objective choice, augmentation [...] Read more.
Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are increasingly applied to mitigate extreme class imbalance in intrusion detection systems, yet reported improvements often obscure role augmentation intensity and adversarial stability. This paper presents a controlled ablation study that isolates the impact of adversarial objective choice, augmentation ratio, and training duration on GAN-based minority data augmentation for highly imbalanced tabular cybersecurity data. Using the UWF-ZeekData22 dataset, nine MITRE ATT&CK tactic-versus-benign classification tasks are evaluated under augmentation ratios of 0.25 and 0.50 and training durations of 400 and 800 epochs. Four GAN variants—Vanilla GAN, Conditional GAN (cGAN), WGAN, and WGAN-GP—are assessed using stratified cross-validation and five classical classifiers representing diverse inductive biases. The results reveal consistent structural patterns. Moderate augmentation (r = 0.25) with controlled training (400 epochs) yields the most stable and reliable improvement in minority recall. Wasserstein-based objectives demonstrate superior stability under aggressive augmentation and prolonged training, while conditional GANs frequently exhibit recall collapse in ultra-sparse regimes. Increasing augmentation volume does not uniformly improve performance and may introduce distributional overlaps that degrade linear and margin-based classifiers. Tree-based classifiers remain largely invariant once sufficient minority density is achieved. These findings demonstrate that adversarial calibration is more important than architectural complexity for improving the detection of rare attacks. The study provides practical guidance for designing robust GAN-based augmentation pipelines under extreme cybersecurity class imbalance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Solutions for Network and Cyber Security)
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18 pages, 1430 KB  
Article
Multi-Layer Traffic Analysis Framework for DDoS Attacks in Software-Defined IoT Networks
by Keerthana Balaji and Mamatha Balachandra
Future Internet 2026, 18(3), 164; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi18030164 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 22
Abstract
The data plane and the control plane are targets for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the Software-Defined Internet of Things (SDIoT). Currently available studies rely on observations from a single network layer which limits the cross-layer attack analysis. This paper presents [...] Read more.
The data plane and the control plane are targets for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the Software-Defined Internet of Things (SDIoT). Currently available studies rely on observations from a single network layer which limits the cross-layer attack analysis. This paper presents a synchronized, phase-aware, and a multi-layer traffic collection framework mimicking SDIoT environments under diverse DDoS attack scenarios. The data collected are the metrics captured at host, switch, and controller layers during normal, attack, and post-attack phases with strict temporal alignment. For capturing diverse DDoS attack behaviors in SDIoT environments, representative data plane attacks including volumetric flooding and switch-level flow table saturation were used. Control plane level attack targeting the SDN controller was implemented. The evaluation was done using a Mininet-based SDIoT testbed with a POX controller. Each scenario is executed across five independent runs with statistical validation. The proposed framework enables reproducible and time-aligned multi-layer analysis through standardized orchestration and automated logging. Results indicate that SDIoT DDoS behavior demonstrates differently across traffic, state, and resource-level metrics, and that accurate characterization benefits from temporally aligned multi-layer monitoring rather than relying solely on packet rate analysis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Trust in Intelligent Networked Systems)
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21 pages, 511 KB  
Review
Smart Urban Logistics and Tube-Based Freight Systems: A Review of Technological Integration and Implementation Barriers
by Fellaki Soumaya, Molk Oukili Garti, Arif Jabir and Jawab Fouad
Smart Cities 2026, 9(3), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities9030052 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 29
Abstract
Background: Smart urban logistics has emerged as a key element of sustainable city development, with direct effects on economic performance, environmental quality, and urban livability. Issues with traffic, pollutants, infrastructure strain, and last-mile delivery efficiency have become more pressing due to rapid urbanization [...] Read more.
Background: Smart urban logistics has emerged as a key element of sustainable city development, with direct effects on economic performance, environmental quality, and urban livability. Issues with traffic, pollutants, infrastructure strain, and last-mile delivery efficiency have become more pressing due to rapid urbanization and the expansion of e-commerce. In this regard, underground or enclosed corridor-based tube-based freight transit systems have surfaced as a viable smart infrastructure option for automated and low-impact commodities delivery. Methods: This study adopts an analytical literature review complemented by a structured case study analysis to examine the potential role of tube-based freight transport systems in future urban logistics. Key technological concepts, including pneumatic tubes, automated capsule transport, and integration with digital platforms, the Physical Internet, and smart city management systems, are examined through a structured analytical review of the literature. Results: The outcome of the reviewed studies indicates that tube-based systems can contribute to congestion alleviation, emission reduction, and improved delivery reliability by shifting selected freight flows away from surface transport networks. However, governance frameworks, infrastructure integration, and institutional coordination mechanisms continue to have a significant impact on claimed performance outcomes. Conclusions: Tube-based freight systems represent a promising but conditional pathway toward smarter and more sustainable urban logistics. Their large-scale deployment is forced by high capital costs, standardization challenges, regulatory uncertainty, and social acceptance issues. Coordinated investment plans, encouraging legal frameworks, and integrated urban planning techniques in line with smart city goals are needed to overcome these obstacles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Smart Urban Mobility, Transport, and Logistics)
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20 pages, 3290 KB  
Article
Decoding the Urban Digital Landscape for Sustainable Infrastructure Planning: Evidence from Mobile Network Traffic in Beijing
by Jiale Qian, Sai Wang, Yi Ji, Zhen Wang, Ruihua Dang and Yunpeng Wu
Sustainability 2026, 18(6), 3007; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18063007 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 10
Abstract
Sustainable urban development increasingly depends on understanding how digital activity is distributed across space and time, yet the spatiotemporal dynamics of the urban digital landscape remain poorly mapped by conventional data sources. This study uses Beijing as an empirical testbed, applying a multi-dimensional [...] Read more.
Sustainable urban development increasingly depends on understanding how digital activity is distributed across space and time, yet the spatiotemporal dynamics of the urban digital landscape remain poorly mapped by conventional data sources. This study uses Beijing as an empirical testbed, applying a multi-dimensional analytical framework to massive mobile network traffic data to decode the metabolic rhythms, distributional laws, and functional organization of the urban digital landscape. The results reveal three findings. First, the urban digital landscape exhibits a sleepless trapezoidal temporal rhythm characterized by continuous saturation without a midday trough and a quantifiable weekend activation lag, indicating that digital metabolism is structurally decoupled from physical mobility patterns. Second, digital traffic follows a skew-normal distribution consistent with a 20/70 rule of spatial polarization, in which the top 20% of super-connector nodes sustain approximately 70% of total urban digital flow, yielding a Gini coefficient of 0.68 as a measurable indicator of infrastructure inequality and systemic vulnerability. Third, four distinct functional prototypes are identified—ranging from continuously active metropolitan cores to inverse-tidal ecological peripheries—empirically validating Beijing’s polycentric transformation through the lens of digital flows. These findings demonstrate that large-scale mobile network traffic data offers a replicable and structurally distinct lens for sustainable urban digital governance, supporting resilient network planning, equitable allocation of digital resources, and evidence-based monitoring of urban functional transformation in rapidly growing megacities. Full article
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29 pages, 1632 KB  
Article
Context-Aware Software-Defined Wireless Networks: An AI-Based Approach to Deal with QoS
by Dainier González Romero, Sergio F. Ochoa and Rodrigo M. Santos
Future Internet 2026, 18(3), 162; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi18030162 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 35
Abstract
Many IoT systems require real-time communication, which imposes strict timing constraints on data transmission and stresses network propagation models. These systems need to address these communication requirements using wireless networks and also manage quality of service. While Software-Defined Wireless Networks (SDWNs) offer a [...] Read more.
Many IoT systems require real-time communication, which imposes strict timing constraints on data transmission and stresses network propagation models. These systems need to address these communication requirements using wireless networks and also manage quality of service. While Software-Defined Wireless Networks (SDWNs) offer a compelling alternative for these scenarios, they lack dynamic mechanisms to autonomously adapt network behavior to fluctuating operational conditions. In order to do that, this paper builds on the authors’ previous work and shows how to implement Context-Aware Software-Defined Wireless Networks (CA-SDWNs) that use a self-adapting traffic management strategy to deal with dynamic real-time requirements. In particular, it adapts the medium access protocol parameters to changes in the operational context using an intelligent agent in the control loop of the network. We implement the CA-SDWN model using the NS-3 simulator, and that implementation is made available for researchers and developers through an open-source library. The model is evaluated using several SDWNs that operate under dynamic conditions. The experimental results show how incorporating artificial intelligence into the control loop enables the use of the context information to enhance the predictability of the medium access protocol parameters, thus handling different traffic QoS according to the demand of IoT applications. It represents a clear contribution for researchers and developers of these systems when they have to deal with QoS and real-time constrained communication in SDWNs implemented on WiFi. Full article
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