Rapid urbanisation worldwide and climate change bring various challenges for urban development, including social inequality, unbalanced economic development and inadequate environmental protection. The Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for "making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable". The New Urban Agenda (NUA) aims to create conditions for a fundamental transformation of sustainable urban development patterns and implement SDG 11 indicator monitoring and evaluation.
Comprehensive and synthesized studies with multiple sourced data in urban environment, society, and sustainability are urgently needed. Comparing with the traditionally statistical techniques, new approaches involving the big earth data show great advantages in acquiring data for urban sustainability studies. Big earth data including geo-spatial data and remotely sensed data provide critical data sources for studying and improving coupled environmental, social, and economic systems to achieve urban sustainability. Therefore, big earth data has played important roles in monitoring urban infrastructure, disaster, air pollution, heat island effect and others, providing data products, algorithms and models for urban sustainable development research. This Special Issue encourages submissions associated with the urban sustainability theories, data products, algorithms and models, indicator monitoring and evaluation, as well as comprehensive assessment of SDG 11. The potential topics include but are not limited to:
1) Urban sustainability theories, including urban monitoring indicator theory framework system, the trade-offs and synergies of SDG 11, and so on.
2) Algorithms and models for monitoring SDG 11 indicator, such as affordable urban living, urban transportation, urban land use efficiency, disaster, environmental pollution, and open public spaces.
3) Data products related to SDG 11 indicators.
4) SDG 11 Indicator process monitoring and evaluation.
5) Comprehensive assessment of SDG 11 under SDG and NUA framework.
