Circular-Economy Solutions for Sustainable Building Materials
A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Materials, and Repair & Renovation".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 18
Special Issue Editors
Interests: building materials; circular economy
Interests: whole life carbon assessment; whole building LCA; structural engineering; data analysis; machine learning; AI applications
Interests: built environment; sustainable materials; life cycle assessment; circular economy; carbon footprinting; low-carbon urban planning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The construction sector is one of the largest consumers of natural resources and generators of carbon emissions and waste worldwide. Transitioning toward a circular economy is therefore essential to achieving climate goals and long-term sustainability in the built environment. Circular economy strategies such as material reuse, recycling, and design for adaptability offer effective pathways to reduce embodied energy and emissions while supporting innovation and resilience across construction value chains.
This Special Issue, Circular-Economy Solutions for Sustainable Building Materials, focuses on advancing scientific, technological, economic, data-driven, and policy perspectives that promote circularity in construction materials and components. The Special Issue aims to provide interdisciplinary insights into how circular material solutions contribute to environmental, economic, and social sustainability by reducing waste, conserving resources, creating new business opportunities, and fostering regenerative design. In addition to conventional approaches, this issue emphasizes the emerging role of big data, digitalization, and artificial intelligence in enabling material traceability, optimizing resource flows, and supporting evidence-based decision-making for circular construction.
We invite original research articles and reviews addressing (but not limited to):
- Design for the disassembly and reuse of building materials;
- Life-cycle and circularity assessment tools;
- Bio-based or high-recycled-content construction materials;
- Digital platforms enabling material tracking and recovery;
- Circular business models and policy instruments for construction;
- Big data collection, integration, and analytics for material circularity;
- AI- and machine learning–based approaches for predictive material management;
- Data-driven life-cycle assessment (LCA) and material flow analysis (MFA);
- Open data infrastructures and interoperability for construction material databases.
Dr. Ali Amiri
Dr. Yang Shen
Prof. Dr. Jukka Heinonen
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
- circular economy
- low-carbon materials
- life-cycle assessment (LCA)
- material reuse and recycling
- embodied carbon
- design for disassembly
- material flow analysis (MFA)
- big data analytics
- data-driven decision-making
- artificial intelligence
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