Industry 4.0 Technologies for Global Challenges
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 38400
Special Issue Editors
Interests: industry 4.0; society 5.0; intelligent and sustainable manufacturing; human-machine interaction; system design; global challenges; disaster management
Interests: digital sustainability; sustainable supply chains; Industry 4.0; sustainable manufacturing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The world has been facing increasing global challenges and crises, such as flood, wildfire, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These global challenges have greatly affected the natural environment and human activities and will threaten the development of society if we continue our current production and consumption behavior. However, the evolution of Industry 4.0 technologies offers innovative opportunities for tackling such global challenges, e.g., using robotics for reconfiguring and ramping up ventilator production in the face of COVID-19 [1,2], using big data and AI for tracking pandemics, such as COVID-19, and using computer vision, artificial intelligence, and big data (sometimes combined with drones or social media technologies) to conduct preliminary damage assessments caused by earthquakes, floods, or fires.
This Special Issue aims to focus on research interfacing Industry 4.0 technologies with global challenges related, in particular, to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [3]. The following research topics, SDGs, and Industry 4.0 technologies would be of particular interest:
- Research topics:
- Disaster/disruption/change management and resilience, particularly related to operations, supply chains, infrastructure, and pandemics, e.g., COVID-19 [1,2,4,5];
- Adoption and management of Industry 4.0 technologies [6–11];
- Design of smart and autonomous systems/vehicles and smart factories [12];
- Digital/smart/intelligent manufacturing;
- Digital supply chains;
- Sustainable development;
- Resource and energy efficiency;
- Systems dynamics;
- Smart cities and smart infrastructure;
- Smart water management;
- Sustainable manufacturing/supply chains/logistics;
- Environmental and social sustainability.
- SDGs:
- SDG 9: Industry, innovation, and infrastructure;
- SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities;
- SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production;
- SDG 3: Good health and well-being;
- SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation.
- Examples of Industry 4.0 technologies:
- Augmented/virtual/mixed reality [7–11];
- Artificial intelligence;
- Machine learning;
- Big data [5];
- Digital twins [1,2,9];
- Internet of things.
In addition to original academic research articles, this Special Issue welcomes industrial and policy perspectives on these topics from practitioners in industry, government, and other business practices, as well as academic articles from scholars working across disciplines, including Industry 4.0, engineering, operations management, disaster management, supply chain resilience, information and communications technologies, and sustainable development. Submissions may also include (structured) literature reviews, industrial surveys, methodology articles, and datasets.
Dr. Tariq Masood
Dr. Miying Yang
Dr. Jie Wang
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Industry 4.0
- Society 5.0
- digital technologies
- global challenges
- disaster management
- pandemics
- COVID-19
- disruption management
- resilience
- augmented reality
- virtual reality
- mixed reality
- machine learning
- digital twins
- Internet of things
- IoT
- sustainable development
- management of technology
- smart cities
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