Editorial Introduction

This editorial introduction provides an overview of artificial intelligence for computational sustainability, and introduces the next two special issue articles that will appear in AI Magazine. The emerging interdisciplinary field of computational sustainability (Gomes 2009) draws techniques from computer science, information science, mathematics, statistics, operations research, and related disciplines to help balance environmental and socioeconomic needs for sustainable development. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques play a key role in computational sustainability research, enabling the solution of sustainability problems that involve modeling or decision making in dynamic and uncertain environments. Since 2011, the main AAAI conference has included a special track on computational sustainability, encouraging AI research in this area and broader participation of sustainability researchers in the AAAI community. Sustainable solutions must balance between environmental, societal, and economic demands (United Nations General Assembly 2005).