Scientists receive Best Paper Award 2020

The International Journal of Coal Science & Technology has honoured scientists from the TU Dresden, the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development and the China University of Mining and Technology (Xuzhou) with its “Best Papers 2020” certificate. Wolfgang Wende and the other co-authors received the award for the article “Green infrastructure: a planning concept for the urban transformation of former coal-mining cities”. Together with their Chinese colleagues, the team of authors published the article in 2018.

In awarding the certificate, the international editorial team examined how frequently the 126 articles published in the journal from 2017 to 2019 were downloaded and cited. The winning paper was in the top group. According to Wolfgang Wende: “As this example shows, journals in the field of technology and engineering are also interested in questions about the sustainable transformation of cities.” Here the prerequisite is that topics are interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in nature and that solutions are offered to current problems.

“Green infrastructure” – the topic of the paper – is a concept that aims to strategically plan a network of valuable natural and near-natural areas. This network is designed and developed to provide a wide range of ecological services and to protect biodiversity in rural and urban areas. With the aim of reclaiming former mining areas, the researchers propose in their paper to combine the concept of green infrastructure with specific concepts of environmental rehabilitation.

Publication in Open Access:
Wirth, Peter; Chang, Jiang; Syrbe, Ralf-Uwe; Wende, Wolfgang; Hu, Tinghao: Green infrastructure: a planning concept for the urban transformation of former coal-mining cities. In: International Journal of Coal Science & Technology 5 (2018) 1, pp. 78-91.