IoT Sensors and Systems for the Maintenance of Large Civil and Industrial Infrastructures

Dear Colleagues,

Many large civil and industrial infrastructures—such as water-, gas- and oil-pipeline networks; distribution systems; storage facilities and related assets—are aging and operating close to their design limits. Failures in these infrastructures can lead to severe environmental damage, disruption of essential services and significant economic losses. In this context, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies offer powerful tools for continuous monitoring, early fault detection and condition-based maintenance.

This Special Issue aims to bring together recent advances in IoT sensors, communication architectures, edge and cloud intelligence and digital platforms dedicated to the monitoring and safeguarding of large civil and industrial infrastructures. Particular attention is given to pipelines for water, gas and oil, including solutions for continuously assessing the quality of the transported medium (e.g., drinking water potability) and monitoring the structural health of pipes to detect leaks, dents, corrosion or other forms of degradation.

We invite both theoretical and experimental contributions addressing sensor design, networked monitoring systems, data analytics and real-world deployments. Case studies, pilot projects and cross-disciplinary works involving civil engineering, materials science and ICT are especially welcome.

Topics of Interest

Submissions are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• IoT architectures for monitoring large civil and industrial infrastructures
• Smart sensing and multi-sensor systems for pipeline integrity monitoring
• In-line and distributed sensors for leak, dent, corrosion and crack detection
• IoT devices and platforms for continuous water-quality monitoring (e.g., potability, contamination, turbidity and residual disinfectants)
• Sensors and systems for monitoring gas and oil pipeline conditions and transported fluid properties
• Structural health monitoring (SHM) of buried and above-ground pipeline networks
• Wireless sensor networks and LPWAN solutions (LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, etc.) for long-range infrastructure monitoring
• Edge and fog computing for real-time anomaly detection and predictive maintenance
• AI/ML techniques for fault diagnosis, remaining useful-life (RUL) estimation and risk assessment in critical infrastructures
• Energy-efficient and energy-harvesting IoT devices for long-term field deployments
• Digital twins of pipelines and large infrastructures fed by IoT sensor data
• Cybersecurity, data integrity and privacy in IoT-enabled critical-infrastructure monitoring
• Interoperability, middleware and standardization for industrial IoT in infrastructure maintenance
• Integration of IoT monitoring with asset management and decision-support systems
• Field trials, testbeds and real-world case studies on IoT for infrastructure maintenance and safety

Dr. Marco Marcon
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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