BIM Applications for Smart Sustainable Cities
A special issue of Smart Cities (ISSN 2624-6511).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 120
Special Issue Editors
Interests: sustainability; circular economy; digitlisation; BIM
Interests: energy systems; demand-side flexibility; AI in urban systems
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Smart sustainable cities represent urban environments which leverage digital technologies to promote quality of life and improve environmental, economic, and social sustainability, and building information modelling (BIM) is a joint digital knowledge domain supporting the activities of all stakeholders in the construction industry. Buildings are key elements in the complex systems of smart sustainable cities, they are represented with various data models containing geometrical and/or non-geometrical information, and each model potentially contributes to the larger urban system. BIM applications facilitate the generation, exchange, and processing of data throughout the life cycle of built structures, and the next evolutionary step in the use of building data is their integration into broader systems that represent smart sustainable cities.
While sustainable cities rely on digital connectivity and data integration, their ultimate goal is to optimise physical flows of people, energy, and materials, and BIM can contribute to these efforts, albeit with heterogeneous data structures, as it complements urban-scale knowledge with detailed, building-level information.
The application of BIM can enhance crucial aspects of smart sustainable cities, such as the following topics:
- Multi-source urban data—smart cities require data from multiple sources, and BIM can provide geometric and non-geometric data about the buildings;
- Urban networks—the integration of multiple BIM models allows for the analysis of urban networks and their performance, which is in large part determined by systems of buildings;
- Circular economy—BIM can be used to support the concepts of urban mining and urban harvesting, the enabling better tracking and reuse of resources;
- Energy flows—building models are used to improve operational sustainability and can be integrated to facilitate more efficient energy networks, especially when integrated with simulation tools.
The purpose of this Special Issue is to highlight the importance of BIM applications in the smart sustainable cities, and it expands the understanding of the application of BIM from individual-building scale topics to its true use as a knowledge base that can be easily scaled to the urban level and that can contribute to a wider community beyond a single building. This collection of papers explores the interrelation between the topics of smart cities, sustainable practices, and BIM, which represent inseparable elements of future urban development into an integrated set of research topics.
Dr. Goran Sibenik
Dr. Andrea Bartolini
Dr. Chenyi Cai
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
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. Smart Cities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2000 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
- building stock
- circular economy
- urban harvesting
- interoperability
- energy flow
- system integration
- big data and AI
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