Assessment of Safety, Reliability, Robustness, Risk and Resilience: Building Structures and Civil Infrastructure

Dear Colleagues,

Disasters recorded between 2000 and 2019 are estimated to have resulted in economic losses of US$2.97 trillion and claimed approximately 1.23 million lives. As the frequency and intensity of extreme events continue to rise globally, civil infrastructure and the built environment face mounting pressures from climate change, aging infrastructure and unforeseen hazards (e.g., extreme weather, seismic events or man-made disruptions). Consequently, ensuring building structures and civil infrastructure with sufficient safety, reliability, robustness and resilience has become more critical and urgent than ever. To address these challenges effectively, quantitative assessments of structural safety, reliability, robustness, risk and resilience is essential. We welcome research that advance the state of the art in any of these specific areas, thereby contributing to a broader and more comprehensive knowledge base for researchers and engineers in structural or civil engineering.

The Special Issue encompasses a broad spectrum of structural systems and hazard scenarios. Structural systems include building structures, such as masonry, reinforced concrete, steel and others, as well as infrastructure systems, including bridges, tunnels, new energy infrastructure (e.g., solar support and wind turbine support structures) and temporary structures. We also invite studies addressing diverse loading conditions, encompassing both single and multi-hazard scenarios arising from earthquakes, wind, floods, gravity and snow loads, blasts, impacts, geohazards and human error. Submissions focused on advancing assessment methods and practice within one or more of the following distinct domains are welcome:

1. Safety Evaluation: Experimental, numerical and theoretical investigations on structural behavior under static and dynamic loads; advances in structural design methods and in-depth exploration of structural damage and failure mechanisms.
2. Reliability Assessment: Stochastic analysis methods, structural reliability analysis, dynamic reliability analysis, time-dependent reliability analysis, system reliability and reliability-based design methods.
3. Robustness Quantification: Alternative load path method, tying force method, progressive collapse mechanism, anti-progressive collapse design and analysis and quantification approaches.
4. Risk Management: Methodologies for identifying, quantifying and mitigating hazards; life-cycle risk management and cost–benefit analysis of risk reduction strategies.
5. Disaster Resilience: Urban resilience assessment under single and multiple hazards, GIS-based and AI-driven methodologies, assessment of resilience across multiple spatio-temporal scales and resilience of civil infrastructure systems.

Manuscripts should present original research or comprehensive reviews. We particularly encourage submissions that offer novel insights into the specific challenges associated with quantifying and improving one or more of the five aspects listed in the scope. However, we also welcome high-quality contributions that explore related interdisciplinary topics or innovative methodologies within the broader context of structural performance and infrastructure management.

Dr. Luchuan Ding
Dr. Fulvio Parisi
Dr. André Teófilo Beck
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-anonymized 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.

• structural safety
• structural reliability
• structural robustness/progressive collapse
• risk management
• disaster resilience
• civil engineering
• disaster mitigation
• structural resilience