This book provides new information to understand the relationship between urban development and environmental change to the reader. How to create a sustainable and livable urban environment and realize the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) is one of the biggest challenges in this century, even in the next centuries. The covered subject areas of this book aim at finding a way to push SDGs forward by collecting the related knowledge between urban development and its environmental implication. Specifically, the book focuses on UN SDGs 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and 13 (climate action). Regarding the SDGs 9, this book assesses urban population mobility, urban ecosystem services, and green infrastructure to address climate change in cities. Regarding the SDGs 11, this book explores the sustainability of urban landscape change associated with urbanization based on a multi-scale perspective. Regarding the SDGs 13, this book explores the issues affecting the development of healthy cities in the context of climate change and possible ways to address them. This book focuses on newer fields related to various forms of urbanization and urban climate. Under different urbanization and development scenarios, the city and built environment are facing new challenges and become a major concern. Better understandings of related physical laws and sustainable technologies are badly needed. This book is a good reference to urban planners, city officials, citizens who are concerned about the city environment, and policymakers, as well as students studying urban structure and environment.

On 2 June 2022 in Stockholm, an UN-backed coalition of 1,000 stakeholders from over 100 countries launched an Action Plan to steer digitalization towards accelerating environmentally and socially sustainable development. The Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability aims to help reorient and prioritize the application of digital technologies to meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Inspired by this Agenda, we have directed our research interest toward the search for approaches to sustainable digital transformation for the environment. This Research Topic is a part of our initiative at the annual international scientific conference ‘Digital Transformation in Industry’ (DTI), held by the Institute of Economics of the Ural Branc

While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.

The U.S./Russian collaboration that used the Space Shuttle and the Mir Space Station as platforms for acquiring remote sensing information about the Earth between 1996 and 1998 produced significant scientific results on hydrology, land use, and changes in some of the Earth's most dynamic environments. Many of these outstanding images are presented here and compared with photographs taken during earlier missions, allowing detection of changes on the Earth's surface. Studies reported in this fascinating volume include observations of El Niño-related phenomena; fluctuating water levels of the Caspian and Aral Seas; smoke, dust, and aerosols in the atmosphere; urban land use changes; and drought in the southeastern United States and Mexico. This valuable information, and the techniques used to gather it, will form the basis for future remote sensing studies to be conducted from the International Space Station.

Since the middle of the last century, rapid population growth and urbanization have led to the encroachment of a large number of natural spaces, resulting in a series of ecological security issues such as environmental pollution, resource depletion and habitat destruction, which have severely challenged global sustainable development. Urban ecological security is an important barrier to urban residents' production and life, the foundation and core of national or regional ecological security, and it is of great significance to promote green development and harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. With global warming, frequent natural disasters and other multifactorial threats, the issue of ecological security in cities as centers of the settlement have become a focus of international attention. However, cities are complex systems with social, economic and natural conditions coupled with each other. Under the overlapping of many factors, the basic problems such as the mechanism of urban development on ecological security have not been fully explained, and there is also a lack of quantitative assessment methods corresponding to urban ecological conditions, let alone simulation and prediction.

The comprehensive volume focuses on spatial, temporal, conceptual and empirical approaches to various elements of urban dynamics, environment and urban health. It demonstrates a multidisciplinary account of the significant dimensions of urbanization and urban life. Chapters by leading international experts are presented in sections on urban dynamics, Urban Environmental Issues, Urban Health Problems and Urban Development, Planning and Policies. Each chapter provides a breadth of information on conceptual and empirical studies of urban issues. It enables the readers to understand the interconnections of various vital elements of each urban-related topical issue locally, regionally and globally. Extensive maps, charts, diagrams and tables as cartographic tools facilitate the reader’s understanding. It also outlines an action plan for policy program change in both the developed and less developed countries toward sustainable urban development and environment for better health, prosperity and quality of life of the present and future urban population. It is an indispensable reference for students, research scholars of geography and environmental, medical, and social sciences at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

This book focuses on game theory approaches utilized on various domains viz., IoT, blockchain and their applications to biomedical and healthcare services. The book bridges the gap between radiologists and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven automated systems by investigating various techniques such as game theoretic approach, blockchain technology basically utilized for security, and IoT applied on metaverse. Healthcare Services in the Metaverse: Game Theory, AI, IoT, and Blockchain, identifies the potential areas where game theory and block chain techniques can be harnessed in the metaverse. The book discusses the integration of virtual reality (VR) with augmented reality to identify the new emerging techniques in healthcare to metaverse, where doctors and/or patients can see any kind of operation in the VR metaverse. The authors use game theoretical and blockchain approaches to understand healthcare issues, with the aim of utilizing different technologies of metaverse platform for health informatics. This book is written to help healthcare practitioners and individuals across academia and research, as well as for those who work in biomedical, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), metaverse, VR, blockchain, and related technologies.

Smart Cities Policies and Financing: Approaches and Solutions is the definitive professional reference for harnessing the full potential of policy making and financial planning in smart cities. It covers the effective tools for capturing the dynamic relations between people, policies, financing, and environments, and where they are most often useful and effective for all relevant stakeholders. The book examines the key role of science, technology, and innovation (STI) - especially in information and communications technologies - in the design, development, and management of smart cities policies and financing. It identifies the problems and offers practical solutions in implementation of smart infrastructure policies and financing. Smart Cities Policies and Financing is also about how the implementation of smart infrastructure projects (related to the challenges of the lack of financing and the application of suitable policies) underlines the key roles of science, technology and innovation (STI) communities in addressing these challenges and provides key policies and financing that will help guide the design and development of smart cities. - Brings together experts from academia, government and industry to offer state-of- the-art solutions for improving the lives of billions of people in cities around the globe - Creates awareness among governments of the various policy tools available, such as output-based contracting, public-private partnerships, procurement policies, long-term contracting, and targeted research funds in order to promote smart infrastructure implementation, and encouraging the use of such tools to shape markets for smart infrastructure and correct market failures - Ensures the insclusiveness of smart city projects by adequately addressing the special needs of marginalized sections of society including the elderly, persons with disabilities, and inhabitants of informal settlements and informal sectors - Ensures gender considerations in the design of smart cities and infrastructure through the use of data generated by smart systems to make cities safer and more responsive to the needs of women - Demonstrate practical implementation through real-life case studies - Enhances reader comprehension using learning aids such as hands-on exercises, checklists, chapter summaries, review questions, and an extensive appendix of additional resources