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Digital Technologies in Construction and Built Environment
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Digital Technologies in Construction and Built Environment

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 April 2026 | Viewed by 542

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lu Gao

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004, USA
Interests: big data in construction industry and asset management; artificial intelligence; machine learning; data science; natural language processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Zia Din

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004, USA
Interests: construction safety; virtual and augmented reality; building information modeling (BIM); digital safety training
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jingran Sun

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
Interests: infrastructure resilience; agent-based modeling; asset management; reinforcement learning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Digital technologies are revolutionizing the construction and built environment sectors, offering transformative improvements in productivity, quality, and safety. This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to share their recent advances and applications of emerging digital tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, building information modeling (BIM), reality capture technologies (e.g., LiDAR, drones) and visual understanding (e.g., image- and video-based activity recognition, safety monitoring, and site analysis), Internet of Things (IoT), construction robotics, big data analytics, large language models (LLMs), augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), and automation in construction. We are particularly interested in papers that explore how these technologies improve planning, construction execution, project monitoring, sustainability, and workforce productivity. We welcome the contribution of theoretical advancements, innovative case studies, and novel methodologies that demonstrate measurable impacts in real-world settings. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary perspectives and encourage submissions from academia, industry, and government.

Dr. Lu Gao
Dr. Zia Din
Dr. Jingran Sun
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

  • artificial intelligence (AI)
  • large language models (LLMs)
  • digital twins
  • building information modeling
  • reality capture
  • visual understanding
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • construction robotics
  • augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR)
  • construction automation

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

30 pages, 42468 KB  
Article
From “Data Silos” to “Collaborative Symbiosis”: How Digital Technologies Empower Rural Built Environment and Landscapes to Bridge Socio-Ecological Divides: Based on a Comparative Study of the Yuanyang Hani Terraces and Yu Village in Anji
by Weiping Zhang and Yian Zhao
Buildings 2026, 16(2), 296; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16020296 - 10 Jan 2026
Viewed by 205
Abstract
Rural areas are currently facing a deepening “social-ecological divide,” where the fragmentation of natural, economic, and cultural data—often trapped in “data silos”—hinders effective systemic governance. To bridge this gap, in this study, the Rural Landscape Information Model (RLIM), an integrative framework designed to [...] Read more.
Rural areas are currently facing a deepening “social-ecological divide,” where the fragmentation of natural, economic, and cultural data—often trapped in “data silos”—hinders effective systemic governance. To bridge this gap, in this study, the Rural Landscape Information Model (RLIM), an integrative framework designed to reconfigure rural connections through data fusion, process coordination, and performance feedback, is proposed. We validate the framework’s effectiveness through a comparative analysis of two distinct rural archetypes in China: the innovation-driven Yu Village and the heritage-conservation-oriented Hani Terraces. Our results reveal that digital technologies drive distinct empowerment pathways moderated by regional contexts: (1) In the data domain, heterogeneous resources were successfully integrated into the framework in both cases (achieving a Monitoring Coverage > 80%), yet served divergent strategic ends—comprehensive territorial management in Yu Village versus precision heritage monitoring in the Hani Terraces. (2) In the process domain, digital platforms restructured social interactions differently. Yu Village achieved high individual participation (Participation Rate ≈ 0.85) via mobile governance apps, whereas the Hani Terraces relied on cooperative-mediated engagement to bridge the digital divide for elderly farmers. (3) In the performance domain, the interventions yielded contrasting but positive economic-ecological outcomes. Yu Village realized a 25% growth in tourism revenue through “industrial transformation” (Ecology+), while the Hani Terraces achieved a 12% value enhancement by stabilizing traditional agricultural ecosystems (Culture+). This study contributes a verifiable theoretical model and a set of operational tools, demonstrating that digital technologies are not merely instrumental add-ons but catalysts for fostering resilient, collaborative, and context-specific rural socio-ecological systems, ultimately offering scalable governance strategies for sustainable rural revitalization in the digital era. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Technologies in Construction and Built Environment)
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