Digital Twins and Performance-Driven Conservation of Historic Built Systems: Buildings, Infrastructures and Industrial Heritage

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.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Buildings.

Dr. Alberto Sanchez-Lite
Dr. José Luis Fuentes-Bargues
Dr. Cristina Gonzalez-Gaya
Dr. Sara María Sánchez González
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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