Digital Twins and Performance-Driven Conservation of Historic Built Systems: Buildings, Infrastructures and Industrial Heritage
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 10
Special Issue Editors
Interests: heritage; HBIM; health and safety; engineering education; ergonomics; manufacturing engineering; project engineering; production engineering; process management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: heritage; construction; project management; HBIM; public procurement; environmental impact assessment; health and safety; major hazards
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: heritage; health and safety; maintenance; industrial safety; lean manufacturing; product development; project management; production engineering; process management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: natural heritage; cultural heritage; citizen science; geoscience; land use planning; ecology; public policy; sustainable development
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Historic built systems encompass not only architectural structures but also infrastructures, industrial facilities, and the technical machinery that enabled production, transportation, water management, and energy conversion across centuries. Their conservation increasingly requires the integration of advanced digital tools with performance-based assessment methods capable of describing structural behaviour, mechanical functioning, environmental response, operational processes, and long-term degradation dynamics.
This Special Issue aims to explore how digital twins, HBIM, 3D/4D documentation, simulation models, and data-driven monitoring frameworks can be combined with performance-oriented conservation strategies to ensure the preservation, understanding, and sustainable reuse of historic built systems. The focus of this issue includes buildings, infrastructures (hydraulic, industrial, transport-related), and heritage machinery or engineered components, acknowledging their intertwined architectural, mechanical, and operational dimensions.
We welcome methodological, empirical, experimental, and theoretical contributions that demonstrate how digital technologies can enhance the documentation, analysis, risk prediction, maintenance, and heritage management of complex historical systems.
Dr. Alberto Sanchez-Lite
Dr. José Luis Fuentes-Bargues
Dr. Cristina Gonzalez-Gaya
Dr. Sara María Sánchez González
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- digital twin
- historic built systems
- HBIM
- industrial heritage
- 3D/4D modelling
- data-driven heritage
- infrastructural heritage
- heritage machinery
- preventive conservation
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