Land Use Planning and Advanced Geospatial Technologies for Cultural Heritage Conservation and Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

The diagnosis of the preservation status of historical assets, coupled with the analysis of their structural integrity and the surrounding dynamically changing planning environment, constitutes one of the priority challenges in contemporary engineering and spatial planning sciences. A crucial aspect in this context is the effective integration of diverse research methodologies, the harmonization of multi-source geospatial data with evolving land use forms, and the efficient exploration of heterogeneous datasets. High research effectiveness depends on a skillful transition from the planning scale (macro)—encompassing urban elements and spatial planning regulations—to the metrological scale (micro), including the precise deformation assessment of individual objects using advanced remote sensing, photogrammetric, and geotechnical technologies. This holistic approach to heritage studies, which integrates geoinformation, planning aspects, and the analysis of archival materials, represents the core focus of this Special Issue, to which we cordially invite submissions.

The primary objective of this Special Issue is to gather together high-quality papers (original research articles and comprehensive review papers) that offer insights into the synergistic integration of spatial planning, advanced geospatial data acquisition, processing, and analytical methods with archival research. This integration is sought to facilitate a comprehensive understanding and modeling of phenomena that influence the structural integrity and preservation status of cultural heritage assets. Topics encompassing land use, spatial and urban planning, with their integration with geoinformation–based methodologies, are particularly welcomed.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

- Role of advanced geoinformatics in comprehensive heritage documentation;

- Synergistic integration of sensing data with spatial planning;

- Combining remote sensing, photogrammetric, and geodetic solutions with elements of spatial planning and regulations;

- Multi-format and multi-scale data fusion for land use change analysis;

- Methodologies for integrating multi-format spatial data across macro- and micro-scales to effectively document and analyze changes in land use patterns and their impact on historic sites;

- Development of planning-oriented computer systems using artificial intelligence;

- Methodologies for integrating multi-source spatial data to build planning expert systems (PESs), with a particular emphasis on utilizing machine learning (ML) and deep learning techniques.

We cordially invite contributors from the fields of spatial and urban planning, geodesy, and geoinformatics, as well as civil engineering, construction, and data science. Experts from other related disciplines whose novel perspectives can effectively link interdisciplinary experiences and enrich the current state of science and technology in this area are also strongly encouraged to submit.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and comprehensive review papers.

Dr. Krzysztof R. Karsznia
Dr. Agnieszka Zwirowicz-Rutkowska
Prof. Dr. Izabela Karsznia
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. Land 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 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.