Smart Sustainable Development: Exploring Innovative Solutions and Sustainable Practices for a Resilient Future

About this Research Topic

Background

United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a blueprint to address the world's most pressing challenges, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Research plays a pivotal role in understanding these complex issues, providing evidence-based insights to guide policy formulation, program development, and implementation strategies.

Smart sustainable development refers to an innovative, forward thinking, and or technologically advanced approach that combines innovative solutions with sustainable practices to promote long-term environmental, social, and economic well-being. This Research Topic has been created in collaboration with an international event comprising online and face-to-face opportunities to highlight practical solutions to sustainability, in line with the United Nations' SDGs. This presents a unique opportunity for a wide range of sustainable practitioners, from academia, industry, and communities to present research works and projects with an innovation focus, enabling international networking and knowledge sharing to support a more sustainable and inclusive future.

This Research Topic seeks to investigate both complete or ongoing projects introducing innovative solutions that are strongly aligned with the UN SDGs and have led to tangible outcomes with remarkable impact and benefit to sustainable development. The key aspects contributing to smart sustainable development include technological integration, environmental stewardship, social equity, economic prosperity, resilient communities and infrastructure, and collaboration and governance. We welcome contribution from individual researchers, academic groups and partnerships between academics and professionals. Research focused on using innovation to bridge the gap between global aspirations and local realities, taking into account diverse cultural, social, economic, and environmental contexts is particularly welcome.

Topics can cover (but are not limited to) the following themes:

Smart technologies to further sustainable development, including in built environment, biotechnologies, energy systems, health care, education, transportations, and emergency, and disaster risk management
Sustainable infrastructure, including policies, creative design and the implementation of new methods, materials and approaches to the planning, construction and use of sustainable buildings, water and wastewater management, stormwater design and solid waste management
Digitalization and intelligence for the uptake of sustainable solutions, including through smart energy systems, mobility, digital transformation and disruption, resilience and disaster management, and the growth of digital cities
Community and healthcare solutions to benefit gender equality, community development, indigenous peoples, and the preservation of local, region and national cultural heritage in new ways
Nature resource protection and management approaches, including environmental conservation, water-sensitive design, coastal erosion, systems solutions and adaptation to climate change
Sustainable agricultural initiatives to increase the uptake and use of new approaches and methods, including ones which incorporate creative solutions to supporting natural ecosystems.

Keywords: Sustainable development, Innovative sustainable solutions, Smart sustainable solutions and practices, Environmental protection, Community support and healthcare, Sustainable infrastructure, Sustainable digitization and intelligence

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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