The Twin Green-Digital Transition in the Built Environment: Multiscale and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 1293
Special Issue Editors
Interests: digital technologies; BIM/HBIM; IEQ; LCA; urban resilience; building hygiene
Interests: built heritage digitalization; HBIM; semantic web technologies; digital survey; ontologies
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The digital and green transitions are redefining how sustainability is interpreted and implemented within the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) sector. Aligned with key European policy frameworks—such as the Green Deal, the Renovation Wave, and the broader Twin Transition agenda—emerging strategies move beyond energy efficiency to address resilience, health, and lifecycle-based responsibility. Digital technologies—such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), Heritage BIM (HBIM), Digital Twins, Extended Reality (XR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI)—are enabling integrated, data-driven workflows that support sustainable design, construction, management, and reuse of the built environment.
This Special Issue aims to explore multiscale and interdisciplinary perspectives on the convergence of digitization and sustainability in the built environment. Contributions are encouraged to critically address spatial and temporal scales ranging from district and urban scales to individual buildings and construction systems, and to bridge disciplines such as architecture, engineering, environmental science, and data management. Topics of interest include digital workflows for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), Circular Economy (CE), and climate resilience; as well as the development of interoperable and open-standard platforms that support stakeholder engagement and collaborative decision-making. Special emphasis is placed on methods and applications that promote adaptive reuse, retrofit strategies, social inclusion, cultural heritage valorization, material traceability, and ethical data governance. Key enabling technologies—such as Digital Twins, IoT-based sensing systems, AI-driven decision support tools, and Extended Reality (XR)—are investigated for their potential to foster participatory and context-aware design and operational strategies. The role of Common Data Environments (CDEs) and semantic interoperability is also highlighted, particularly in enhancing cross-disciplinary coordination throughout the entire building lifecycle.
We invite original research articles and reviews covering, but not limited to, the following themes:
- BIM/HBIM-based workflows for sustainable renovation and adaptive reuse.
- Digital Twin and AI applications for IEQ and Healthy Buildings.
- Multi-scale LCA digital integration in design and operations.
- Data-driven approaches for occupant comfort and energy optimization.
- Semantic web technologies and ontologies for supporting interoperability.
- AI and IoT for real-time monitoring of comfort and environmental quality.
- XR-enhanced workflows for the experiential design and management of the built environment.
- Open data standards and metadata structuring for lifecycle analysis.
- Participatory and multi-stakeholder frameworks CDE-based for sustainable practices.
- Best practices in circular design, resilience strategies, and digital heritage valorization.
We look forward to receiving your contributions that will advance knowledge and practice in shaping intelligent, green, and human-centered built environments.
Dr. Alessandro D'Amico
Dr. Stefano Cursi
Dr. Kristis C. Alexandrou
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. Sustainability 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 2400 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
- BIM
- HBIM
- digital twin
- XR
- IoT
- IEQ
- LCA
- circular economy
- semantic web
- healthy buildings
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