Innovative Health Monitoring and Evaluation of Ancient Stone Structures
A special issue of Heritage (ISSN 2571-9408).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 394
Special Issue Editors
Interests: structural health monitoring; smart multifunctional composite materials; operational modal analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: heritage buildings; historic preservation; impact of climate; mudejar domestic architecture; preventive conservation; refurbishment; social housing
Interests: adaptive reuse of the built environment; architectural heritage; architectural technology; building rehabilitation; art-driven sustainable heritage; life-cycle oriented design; maintenance and management of built heritage; decision-support tools for heritage
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Historical assets such as churches, towers, dwellings, palaces, burial structures, or artistic artefacts constitute a substantial part of Europe’s cultural heritage. A large proportion were built in ancient stone masonry and has limited or no capacity to withstand tensile stresses stemming from foundation settlements, ground subsidence, live loads, or natural hazards such as earthquakes and landslides. Moreover, they are vulnerable to long-term material degradation processes, including chemical attacks and freeze–thaw cycles, which are increasingly exacerbated by climate change and anthropogenic factors such as the loss of original function, ill-considered interventions, and vandalism. Consequently, historical buildings are particularly prone to structural and material pathologies, underscoring the need for appropriate conservation policies to prevent accelerated deterioration and the irreversible loss of these invaluable heritage assets.
Growing awareness among citizens and public administrations of the critical role that cultural heritage buildings play in the tourism industry and related sectors, as well as of their historical and artistic values, has led to the increasingly widespread adoption of advanced digitalisation and preventive maintenance technologies. These systems encompass a wide range of inspection methods, non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, and long-term structural health monitoring (SHM) strategies aimed at assessing material and structural conditions, detecting pathologies at an early stage without affecting the integrity or artistic value of heritage assets, and optimising preventive interventions to maximise their service life.
This Special Issue aims to collect original papers, review articles, and short communications highlighting the latest advances in research on health monitoring and evaluation of ancient stone structures, including but not limited to:
- AI-assisted damage prognosis and risk assessment
- Digital twins for heritage structures
- Digitalisation
- Effects of climate change on masonry deterioration
- Field applications
- Preventive and planned maintenance of heritage structures
- Multidisciplinary diagnosis
- Static and dynamic structural assessment
- Remote sensing
- Structural health monitoring
- Robotics-assisted inspection of heritage assets
Dr. Enrique García-Macías
Prof. Dr. María Lourdes Gutiérrez-Carrillo
Prof. Dr. Stefania de Medici
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. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1800 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
- AI-assisted damage prognosis and risk assessment
- digital twins for heritage structures
- digitalisation
- effects of climate change on masonry deterioration
- field applications
- preventive and planned maintenance of heritage structures
- multidisciplinary diagnosis
- static and dynamic structural assessment
- remote sensing
- structural health monitoring
- robotics-assisted inspection of heritage assets
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