Smart Operations and Maintenance for Offshore, Rural and Urban Assets

Dear Colleagues,

The inclusion of Industry 4.0 technologies in industrial operations and maintenance is a game-changer for gaining potential benefits, e.g., cut-off the capital investment cost, operating cost, production losses, and extend the asset lifetime. Thus, Industry 4.0 technologies are introduced in several industrial installations by considering the following smart operations and maintenance technologies: designing for predictive maintenance ready equipment, digital twins, agent-based simulation modeling, machine learning algorithms for diagnosis and prognosis, autonomized inspection and delivery vehicles, 3D-printed spare parts, unmanned installations, etc. This topic has garnered significant interest, especially in industry, as reflected by the number of academic publications in recent years.

This Special Issue will cover all aspects of the smart operations and maintenance practices for industrial assets and installation (offshore, e.g., oil and gas platforms, subsea, wind farms, fish farms, and unmanned installations), including model-based systems engineering models, work-processes at design phase, design frameworks, strategies, methodologies, tools, analysis and assessment techniques, systems integrations, data management, architectures, as well as case studies and applications. Our main goal is to bring together stakeholders to exchange ideas and experiences and encourage networking between academia and industry.

We welcome submissions from all topics of smart operations and maintenance technologies applied to any offshore installation, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Work processes
• Architectures
• Design frameworks
• Techniques and strategies
• Methodologies
• Tools and applications
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Analysis processes
• Assessment processes
• Systems integrations
• Data management

Dr. Idriss El-Thalji
Prof. Dr. Jan Frick
Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Emiris
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. Informatics 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.