Smart cities play a vital role in the growth of a nation. In recent years, several countries have made huge investments in developing smart cities to offer sustainable living. However, there are some challenges to overcome in smart city development, such as traffic and transportation management, energy and water distribution and management, air quality and waste management monitoring, etc. The capabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) can help to achieve some goals of smart cities, and there are proven examples from some cities like Singapore, Copenhagen, etc. However, the adoption of AI and the IoT in developing countries has some challenges. The analysis of challenges hindering the adoption of AI and the IoT are very limited. This study aims to fill this research gap by analyzing the causal relationships among the challenges in smart city development, and contains several parts that conclude the previous scholars’ work, as well as independent research and investigation, such as data collection and analysis based on DEMATEL. In this paper, we have reviewed the literature to extract key challenges for the adoption of AI and the IoT. These helped us to proceed with the investigation and analyze the adoption status. Therefore, using the PRISMA method, 10 challenges were identified from the literature review. Subsequently, determination of the causal inter-relationships among the key challenges based on expert opinions using DEMATEL is performed. This study explored the driving and dependent power of the challenges, and causal relationships between the barriers were established. The results of the study indicated that “lack of infrastructure (C1)”, ”insufficient funds (C2)”, “cybersecurity risks (C3)”, and “lack of trust in AI, IoT” are the causal factors that are slowing down the adoption of AI and IoT in smart city development. The inter-relationships between the various challenges are presented using a network relationship map, cause–effect diagram. The study’s findings can help regulatory bodies, policymakers, and researchers to make better decisions to overcome the challenges for developing sustainable smart cities.

Industry 4.0 technologies are causing a paradigm shift in supply chain process management. The digital transformation of the supply chains provides enormous benefits to organizations by empowering collaboration among multiple internal and external organizations and systems. This study presents a narrative review explaining the existing knowledge on digital transformation in supply chain process management using text mining. It summarizes the existing literature to explain the current state of the art in supply chain digitalization. This comprehensive review identifies the most important topics and technologies and determines the future trends in this emerging field. We investigate the articles published in Web of Science and Scopus databases and use text mining techniques (clustering and topic modeling) on the article contents. Using VOS viewer, a bibliometric analysis of 395 articles with 12,700 references is analyzed. The contents of the articles are explored using text mining approaches. The synthesized results reveal that the most important topics in digital transformation are “sustainable supply chain management” and “circular economy and industry 4.0 technologies”. The study further discovers big data, data analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things as the most critical technologies for facilitating supply chain digital transformation. Finally, an overlay heatmap analysis of the research articles found that digital transformation, supply chain management, industry 4.0, decision-making, and sustainability are emerging trends in supply chain digitalization.

Following The Paris Agreement and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a significant number of nations globally have pledged to achieve net‐zero emissions by 2050. The goal is to lower emissions while emphasizing economically and socially sustainable practices. To meet these sustainable development targets, some countries have introduced industry‐specific roadmaps, showing how nations can systematically allocate resources to attain net zero, which includes balancing energy and production needs with existing energy sources. Such a transformation will inevitably encounter obstacles, particularly in reducing reliance on non‐renewable fuels and mitigating existing emissions. This study focuses on identifying these impediments to achieving a net‐zero economy. Utilizing the novel concept of plithogenic sets, the study examines the interdependent relationships among various barriers, providing insights into navigating these constraints. The findings reveal external, economic, and policy and framework obstacles and their subsequent impact on organizational and technological challenges that must be surmounted to reach net‐zero status.

In the past few years, the airline and travel industries have suffered unprecedented crisis during COVID-19 pandemic. With the gradual reopening of economies, airline companies are progressively bouncing back to normalcy. While airline traffic has come back to normalcy, travelers still continue to remain cautious about their health, hygiene and safety. In this regard, we examine the applicability of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled digital technologies in reassuring airline travelers’ confidence by offering benefits, such as contactless travel, health monitoring of onboard travelers, crowd management at the airport, air quality, and hygiene management inside the airport. The study sheds light on emerging travelers’ preference for air travel post-COVID-19. This article prioritizes the IoT-based application areas assessed through the theoretical lens of the theory of planned behavior. Our research highlights the underlying inter-relationships among the digital enablers that can be implemented for the airline industry, focusing on travelers’ hygiene and safety priorities. The study is conducted in the international airports operating in India. By improving travelers’ confidence, this study will help travel and airline industries to revive from the postpandemic loss by using the capabilities of IoT technologies.