Editorial article (Special Issue): Measurement, control and security of systems for smart cities

The transition to truly smart cities demands more than layered technologies; it requires convergent intelligence that unifies physical sensing, adaptive control, and ethical security. This editorial paper brief about the special issue entitled “Measurement, Control and Security of Systems for Smart Cities”. As smart cities are among the most active research areas, the call for papers for this special issue, “VSI: Systems for Smart Cities” attracted a wide range of manuscripts spanning multiple disciplines, including Computer Science, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Communication Engineering, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Urban Construction, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, and Renewable Energy etc. Notably, authors from 16 different countries, including Algeria, Chile, China, Egypt, England, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Jordan, Kosovo, Nigeria, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have contributed their research articles. In this editorial, we synthesize insights from all 30 published articles to present a holistic vision of next-generation urban ecosystems. Together, these works span renewable energy, structural health, healthcare, transportation, noise pollution, public space, and data security, these works collectively redefine what it means to build intelligent infrastructure that is sustainable, equitable, resilient, and trustworthy. We organize these advances around three interwoven pillars: (1) Measurement for Awareness, (2) Control for Adaptation, and (3) Security and Ethics for Trust-and demonstrate how fractional-order controllers, lightweight crack detectors, edge-based triage systems, multimodal transport models, and secure data-mining frameworks all contribute to a human-centered urban future. This synthesis serves as both a technical roadmap and a philosophical compass for the responsible evolution of smart cities.