Call for Papers: Special issue on “Developments in Optimization for Smart Cities”

Guest Editors

Andrea Cynthia Santos
Technological University of Troyes (UTT), Troyes, France

Christophe Duhamel
Clermont-Auvergne University (UCA), Aubiere, France

Sebastian Urrutia
Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Many medium to large cities in the World are facing difficulties in managing and improving their urban areas. The impact on daily life becomes more and more noticeable as the concentration of the population in urban areas rises. The urban population is already higher than the rural one and, according to the United Nations, 5 billion people (out of 8.3 billion) will live in urban areas by 2030. In addition, the situation will become even more difficult since urban sprawl cannot be extended indefinitely. In recent years, serious changes in the environment have been observed with significant ecological, social and financial impact. For instance, increasing concentrations of pollutants (air, soil, water) along with destruction of agricultural areas is leading to less space for production and livestock. Moreover, as cities grow, they require increasing financial input to maintain their urban infrastructures.

In this context, one of society’s major challenges is to transform our cities, or even build new ones, with an emphasis on pollution reduction, on equitable access to essential resources (such as water, electricity, sewerage facilities, and communication) and on urban networks that are able to withstand multiple daily travels. These aspects are strongly related to the concept of smart cities, which relies on innovative ways to manage cities, including participatory governance with citizens, administrations and industry. The goal is to propose services (such as mobility, shared economy, ecological urban areas, and citizen’s inclusion) able to cope with social, economic and ecological issues.

This special issue of International Transactions on Operations Research (ITOR) is devoted to combinatorial optimization problems in the context of smart cities, which contribute to improve services like mobility, information and communications technology to facilitate integration and democratization of the citizens’ space and to evolve the infrastructures and services to integrate massive data. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, smart cities management, smart mobility, smart energy systems, crisis management in smart cities, internet of things, smart home, smart care, and smart agriculture, among others.

The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2018. Papers will be peer-reviewed according to the editorial policy of  the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR), published by the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). They should be original, unpublished, and not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Contributions should be prepared according to the instructions to authors that can be found on the journal homepage. Authors should upload their contributions using the submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/itor, indicating in their cover letter that the paper is intended for this special issue. Other inquiries should be sent directly to the Guest Editors in charge of this issue: Andrea Cynthia Santos (andrea.duhamel@utt.fr), Christophe Duhamel (christophe.duhamel@isima.fr), and Sebastian Urrutia (surrutia@dcc.ufmg.br).