Computer, the flagship publication of the IEEE Computer Society, publishes peer-reviewed articles written for and by computer researchers and practitioners representing the full spectrum of computing and information technology, from hardware to software and from emerging research to new applications. The aim is to provide more technical substance than trade magazines and more practical ideas than research journals. Computer seeks to deliver useful information for all computing professionals and students, including computer scientists, engineers, and practitioners of all levels.

Special Issue on Resilient and Sustainable Smart Communities
Submission Date: 2025-03-31

Smart ecosystems are emerging worldwide, addressing the need for both resilient and sustainable development, meeting key performance indicators that consider social and economic factors as well as technological ones. The growth of such smart ecosystems is no longer constrained to urban scenarios but encompasses others including rural and peri-urban environments that have their own challenges, such as the drastic population reduction in the former and the extremely fast increase in the later. 

This special issue will explore how previous research in smart cities can serve as a cornerstone to support the scalable expansion of smart ecosystems, fostering novel business and societal activities, and developing models with the citizens at their epicenter. It will also provide a forum for new approaches and metrics needed when we conceive of technical solutions to reach sustainability and resilience, especially in the context of the complexities of population growth, climate change, and the astonishing increase of the number of cities around the world. The issue will help highlight the role of a data-driven ecosystem, as it may be an agnostic approach for consolidating both resilient and sustainable paradigms, which include computational concepts such Internet of Things and Services, Data Spaces, Distributed Ledger Technologies, Cloud Edge Computing Continuum, and Artificial Intelligence.

The goal of this special issue is to address the domain of smart communities from a computational point of view, to improve the state of the art, and to present recent technological advances and experiences that are employed in these settings and that take into account a circular economy, climate impact, and the like. 

Authors are encouraged to submit original contributions related to resilient and sustainable smart communities. Topics of interest for this special issue include (but are not limited to):

    Smart communities as systems of systems
    Smart city and smart community applications and services
    Smart city and/or smart community pilot projects
    Smart community embedded and cyberphysical systems
    Smart city and smart community management platforms
    Computing for smart communities (IoT, edge/cloud, Industry 4.0, Society 5.0, etc.)
    Communication technologies, including 6G
    Data management and knowledge extraction
    Distributed ledger technologies supporting smart community ecosystems
    Robust smart and circular communities
    Open data initiatives, cases, and applications
    Data spaces for smart ecosystems
    Digital twins and their application to smart communities
    Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the smart community domain
    People-centric systems and crowd-based computing in smart communities
    Grassroots movements for resilient and sustainable smart ecosystems
    Tools and techniques for urban co-creation
    Studies on behavioral change aspects for sustainability
    Policy for smart communities and their development
    Business models for resilient and sustainable smart communities