Dear Colleagues

Artificial intelligence (AI) has already shown its capacity to resolve realistic sustainability-related problems, and it has successfully contributed to many fields in terms of economy, business, management, environment, resources, ecology, society and individuals, energy, etc.

Recent advances in AI features include the invention of deep neural networks, which are a subset of machine learning, using a model inspired by the structure of the brain. It has been rapidly developed in recent years, in terms of both methodological development and practical applications. It provides computational models of multiple processing neural-network layers to learn and represent data with multiple levels of abstraction. It can implicitly capture intricate structures of large-scale data and is ideally suited to some of the hardware architectures that are currently available.

This problem-solving oriented Special Issue will cover a broad range of topics, applying the latest and emerging theoretical and technical advancements of artificial intelligence, particularly deep learning methods, to various realistic sustainability problems.

Topics may include, but are not limited to applying the following AI methods:

• Traditional AI and big data analytic methods
• Theoretical understanding of deep learning
• Transfer learning, disentangling task transfer learning, and multi-task learning
• Improvising on the computation of a deep network; exploiting parallel computation techniques and GPU programming
• Optimization by deep neural networks
• Design of new loss functions, design of new activation functions, design of new layers
• Explainable AI (XAI) and visualization methods
• New model or improved model of convolutional neural network
in the following areas:
• Sustainable construction, sustainable manufacturing
• Sustainable healthcare, sustainable education
• Sustainable urban and rural development
• Blockchain
• Human geography and social sustainability
• Clean energy
• Sustainable transportation
• Supply chain management
• Water and air pollution
• Sustainable chemistry
• Smart cities, smart manufacturing
• Sustainable culture and heritage
• Climate predictions and control
• Sustainable agriculture, food, wildlife, agroengineering
• Sustainable science and engineering

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 papers will be 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 1800 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.