Smart and Sustainable Cities Conference

Sustainable urban ecosystems: challenges and solutions
July 20-22, 2022

SSC-2022 Program

Scientific Program

The scientific program will include 5 thematic sessions, addressing different aspects of urban sustainable development, including development and maintenance of urban green infrastructures, climate adaptation and carbon neutrality, nature-based solutions and human health.

Sessions

Conveners: Alex Yaroslavtsev (RSAU/ RUDN, Russia) & Riccardo Valentini (RUDN, Russia/ UNITUS, Italy)
The session will focus on the novel approaches and advanced technologies to monitor and assess tree physiology, stability, functions and ecosystem services with especial attention to urban green infrastructure. A wide range of solutions, including visual tree assessment, instrumental methods, remote sensing and IoT implementations will be discussed. We welcome researchers with experience in urban tree assessment as well as practitioners with expertise in management and maintenance of urban green areas.

Conveners: Pavel Konstantinov (RUDN/MSU, Russia)
Climate change is rapidly altering living conditions in urban areas creating urban heat islands (UHI) resulting in negative health effects of the inhabitants. In addition, urban ecosystems have to face multiple climate-driven stressors such as heat waves, air pollution, extreme precipitation and many more reducing their capacity to provide ecosystem services. Nevertheless, urban green infrastructures (UGI) are crucial for the well-being of urban population by cooling air temperature, providing water retention for heavy precipitation events and clean air amongst others. In addition to climate adaptation benefits from UGI, they also help to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon in their biomass and soils. The session will discuss topics in urban climate monitoring and modeling, urban ecosystem services, effects of UGI to energy and carbon fluxes and thus potentials for climate adaptation and mitigation in urban areas towards carbon neutrality. The spatial scale can reach from microclimatic studies to mesoscale, regional and global analyses utilizing methods of remote sensing, modeling, in-situ measurements and geospatial approaches.

Conveners: Olga Maksimova (LAEN Guild, Russia) & Diana Dushkova (UFZ, Germany)
The session will focus on challenges and perspectives of best management techniques and nature-based solutions in urban architecture, landscaping and management. We will focus on green and sustainable solutions in landscape engineering, including green roofs, vertical greening and biofilters. The session aims to highlight provisioning and non-provisioning (e.g., cultural and aesthetic) ecosystem services provided by urban farms. We welcome urban farmers from all over the world to share their expertise and experience. The following topics will be the core for discussion: 1) Theory – factors and mechanisms of formation and functioning of urban green infrastructures, their spatial structure, dynamic, social and environmental impact; 2) Methodology – advanced technologies and approaches to create, maintain and monitor urban green infrastructures; 3) Practices – case studies in planning, engineering, authorization and public apprehension. The session will give an interdisciplinary discussion platform for scientists, landscape designers and engineers, architects, urban managers, policy makers and citizens who are not indifferent to urban greenery.

Conveners: Sergey Gorbov (SSU, Russia) & Yakov Kuzyakov (GOU, Germany)
Soil is the key ecosystem component responsible for important functions and services. Soil quality assessment is a core for sustainable management of this invaluable resource. Urban soils are exposed to direct and indirect anthropogenic influences, they are very heterogeneous and dynamic. The capacity of urban soils to provide ecosystem services (ES) has always been overlooked but the recent concepts and practices of urban sustainable development attract attention to the environmental and socio-economic value of urban soils. This session will focus on new techniques and approaches to study anthropogenic soils, including SUITMAs and soils of arable land. The effect of urban-urban interactions on soils, considering their spatial-temporal variability will be discussed. We welcome studies from a wide range of geographical locations, where the consequences of urbanization on soils are remarkable and specific, e.g., high latitudes, arid zones, tropics etc.

Conveners: Denis Vinnikov (RUDN, Russia) & Olga Gavrichkova (CNR, Italy)
At present, great effort is undertaken to reduce air pollution levels, both ambient and indoors; however, climate change and growing industrialization of developing nations may result in higher concentrations of pollutants, associated with adverse health effects. These include particulate matter (PM), gaseous combustion products and the emerging new chemical substances in the air. With the increasing coverage of ozone, PM, NOx, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants monitoring globally, many nations still suffer from the devastating burden of respiratory and cardiovascular disease associated with air pollution. In addition, water and soil contamination with metals, combustion products and a wide range of human activity waste may result in poorer human health in all directions, including affected health of newborn. High-quality monitoring, interventions to mitigate pollution effects and their effect assessment are pivotal, and we welcome submission addressing any of these. Discussions will focus on medical, public health, engineering and all related aspects of combatting the adverse effects of pollution on human health.

Round Tables

Two round tables will aim to build cooperation between scientists, engineers, business and policy-makers in the hot topics of urban planning, sustainable development and educations: nature-based solutions for urban planning, carbon accounting, citizen science and Open living labs.

Climate change is ongoing and carbon neutrality is claimed the only feasible solution for climate mitigation. Carbon polygons established in different climatic zones and biomes of Russia aim to provide data on C stocks and fluxes in natural, agricultural and urban ecosystems. RT1 will focus on the advances in methodological and infrastructural aspects of C accounting.

The following topics will be the core for discussion: Methodology & Practices – advanced technologies and approaches to create, maintain and monitor urban green infrastructures; case studies in urban planning, landscape engineering, authorization and public apprehension.

Agenda

July 20 - 22, 2022

Wednesday, July 20

10:00 - Registration
10:30 - SSC-2022 Opening ceremony
11:00 - Keynote "Urban green infrastructure in (post) COVID time" by Diana Dushkova & Maria Ignatieva.
12:00 - Coffee-break
12:30 - Session 1. Healthy trees for sustainable cities: advances in monitoring, maintenance and management
14:00 - Lunch
15:00 - Round table 1. Advances in carbon accounting in urban areas: a perspective of citizen sciences and Living labs
17:00 - Coffee-break
17:30 - Session 2. Urban climate, green infrastructures and carbon neutrality
19:00 - Ice-breaking and get together

Thursday, July 21

10:30 - Keynote "Climate change risks, mitigation and adaptation in urban perspective" by Alexander Chernokulsky
11:30 - Coffee-break
12:00 - Session 3. Ecosystem services and Nature-based solution for sustainable urban planning
14:00 - Lunch
15:00 - Round table 2. Blue-green urban infrastructure multi-scale approach
17:00 - Coffee-break
17:30 - Session 5. From environmental health to human health
19:00 - Poster session & Drinks with Snacks

Friday, July 22

10:30 - Keynote "Ecosystem services of SUITMAs" by Prof. Jean Louis Morel
11:30 - Coffee-break
12:00 - Session 4. Soil quality assessment for sustainable management of urban soil resources
14:00 - Lunch
15:00 - 3MUGIS Summer School project defence
17:00 - SSC-2022 Closing ceremony

SSC Conference

Searching for solutions of the environmental problems of modern megapolises

Keynote Speakers

Sessions

Round Tables

Guidelines for Authors

SSC-2022 conference will be held July 18-22, 2022 in a hybrid format to provide a floor to speakers who will not make coming in person.

SSC-2022 conference will include the plenary session, key-note lectures, 5 thematic sessions, 2 round tables. Both oral presentations and posters are welcome for the sessions, whereas only invited lectures are accepted for the round tables. English is an official working language of the conference. Simultaneous translation will be provided at the plenary session and at the selected sessions and round tables.

Oral Presentations

Oral presentation includes a 12 minutes talk and extra 3 minutes for discussion. The authors are kindly asked to follow the time requirements. The authors can send their presentations in .ppt or .pdf format to e-mail info@ssc-conf.org in advance.

Poster Session

Posters are recommended in .jpg or .pdf format (841 mm width × 1189 mm height). Posters should be dedicated to one of the topics of the S1-S5 sessions. The authors are kindly asked to send their posters to e-mail info@ssc-conf.org in advance. All the authors are supposed to present posters in person during the session and answer the questions.

Publications

The participants of the SSC-2022 conference will have an opportunity to publish their contributions in the following formats.

SSC-2022 Proceedings will contain conference papers. Conference papers will be collected starting from August 10, 2022 and until October 30, 2022. The submitted papers will be reviewed by the editorial board and accepted papers will be published by Springer Geography and indexed in Web of Science. The information on the author requirements and publication fees will be available soon at the SSC-2022 website. The publication of the SSC-2022 Proceedings is expected in 2023.
SSC-2022 organizing committee explores opportunity to publish conference papers in the special issues of high-rank per-reviewed journals. The papers will be collected starting from September 15, 2022 and until December 1, 2022 and will be processed by the editorial board following the standard review procedures of the journals. The publication of the special issues is expected in 2023.