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Disruptive Technologies in Smart Systems for Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 9615

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Telecommunication Department, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Interests: Internet of Things; Blockchain; Security; Software Engineering; Cloud Computing; eHealth Systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Interests: modelling and simulation; decision support systems; data analytics; artificial intelligence; Industry 4.0; cyber-physical systems; reliability analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Telecommunications, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
Interests: computer networks; operating systems; software-defined networking

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

One of the main goals of future smart systems is sustainability. In the future, there will be more pressure on natural resources. This is mainly due to the increase in the world population, a further increase in global warming, causing sea level rise and damage to agriculture and infrastructure, as well as increased urbanization, further leading to changes in socio-economic conditions. Therefore, action must be taken for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, involving the quintuple helix model: academia, industry, government, public, and environment.

In line with the 17 UN Goals for Sustainable Development, new and emerging technologies are being utilized to cope with some of the goals. The new reality of the prevalence of data opens up new possibilities for systems that learn and adapt, and even act autonomously. New data sources, new technologies, and new analytical approaches, if applied with responsibility, can enable more efficient and evidence-based decision-making and can better measure progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a way that is both inclusive and fair.

In this context, this Special Issue will explore how future smart systems will look in the context of sustainability and the challenges and opportunities to reaching them. Smart systems that enable sustainability will have major economic, environmental, and social impacts on the way people lead their lives. Successful societies will be built on sustainability.

This Special Issue will collect the work of scientists, practitioners, innovators, and entrepreneurs who are in a position to offer valuable perspectives on this particular research area of disruptive technology and disruptive innovation-based smart systems for sustainability.

Topics of interest include but are not restricted to:

  • Applications of smart systems for sustainability
  • Applications of smart systems for energy efficiency
  • Applications of smart systems for climate change
  • Applications of smart systems for limited resources
  • Applications of smart systems for sustainable food production and agriculture
  • Gamification for sustainable applications
  • Blockchain and distributed ledger technology in smart systems for sustainability
  • Cognitive computing, natural language processing, and neural networks in smart systems for sustainability
  • Security, privacy, and trust in smart systems for sustainability
  • Reliability and resilience of smart systems for sustainability
  • Data science and data curation for smart systems for sustainability
  • Data analytics and decision support for smart systems for sustainability
  • Information and knowledge co-creation
  • Ethical and legal aspects in smart systems for sustainability
  • Economic impact of disruptive technologies
  • Social impact of disruptive technologies
  • Techniques for assessing the impact of disruptive technologies
  • Disruptive Innovation and Entrepreneurship in smart systems for sustainability

For this Special Issue, we will consider scientific, practical, and conceptual research papers, as well as reviews, based on modern methodological approaches.
This Special Issue will help bridge the gap between the desire for sustainability and disruptive technologies used in smart systems.

Thank you for your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Alexandru Vulpe
Prof. Sanja Lazarova-Molnar
Prof. Dr. Marius-Constantin Vochin
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. 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

  • smart systems
  • disruptive technologies
  • sustainability
  • socio-economic impact
  • data analytics

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 52578 KiB  
Article
Hybrid Platform for Assessing Air Pollutants Released from Animal Husbandry Activities for Sustainable Livestock Agriculture
by Razvan Alexandru Popa, Dana Catalina Popa, Gheorghe Emil Mărginean, George Suciu, Mihaela Bălănescu, Denisa Paștea, Alexandru Vulpe, Marius Vochin and Ana Maria Drăgulinescu
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9633; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179633 - 27 Aug 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3382
Abstract
Farming livestock—cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens—contributes to the air pollution of the atmosphere. Agricultural air pollution comes mainly in the form of ammonia, which enters the air as a gas from heavily fertilized fields and livestock waste. A reduction in air pollutants [...] Read more.
Farming livestock—cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens—contributes to the air pollution of the atmosphere. Agricultural air pollution comes mainly in the form of ammonia, which enters the air as a gas from heavily fertilized fields and livestock waste. A reduction in air pollutants from the livestock sector can be achieved by reducing production and consumption, lowering the emission intensity of production, or combining the two. This work proposes an approach for assessing the air pollutant emissions derived from intensive cattle farming. For doing this, the animal feed, the animal behavior, and characteristics and the stable environment data are monitored and collected by a cloud platform. Specifically, Internet of Things (IoT) devices are installed in the farm and key air pollutant parameters from the stable environment (such as CO, NH3, PM1, PM2.5, PM10) are monitored. In this scope, a study about monitoring air pollutants is conducted, showing the most relevant platforms used in this domain. Additionally, the paper presents a comparison between the estimated and monitored air pollutants (AP), showing the fluctuation of the measured parameters. The key takeaway of the study is that ammonia concentration has a higher level during the night, being influenced by the ventilation system of the farm. Full article
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14 pages, 1004 KiB  
Article
Sustaining User Experience in a Smart System in the Retail Industry
by Sheng-Chi Chen and Shari S. C. Shang
Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 5090; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095090 - 1 May 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4773
Abstract
Retail enterprises are embracing new technologies to provide innovative services to customers and engage them. Unmanned retail stores offer a completely new seamless shopping experience for customers. Moreover, artificial intelligence (AI) technology and sophisticated customer behavior should be explored in depth to develop [...] Read more.
Retail enterprises are embracing new technologies to provide innovative services to customers and engage them. Unmanned retail stores offer a completely new seamless shopping experience for customers. Moreover, artificial intelligence (AI) technology and sophisticated customer behavior should be explored in depth to develop a smart system to serve customers. This study focused on achieving a sustainable user experience with a smart system installed in an autonomous store. The development of core functions and a rule-based knowledge set are regarded as the most important tasks in designing autonomous services. In the case study, the core functions were developed on the basis of the design science concept and the rule-based knowledge set was constructed using the action research approach. The developed smart system was optimized to understand in-store customer behavior by continuously observing and refining the user experience. The practical experience of this study provides insights into AI technology use in retailing and can guide enterprises in developing smart systems. Full article
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