Risk Assessment and Structural Optimization of Sustainable Civil Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a new Special Issue “Risk Assessment and Structural Optimization of Sustainable Civil Engineering” in the journal Sustainability. The scientific background and contributions of this Special Issue are outlined below.

Climate change, rapid urbanization, and resource scarcity necessitate a paradigm shift toward sustainable civil infrastructure, while extreme loads due to man-made and natural disasters are still the primary threat to those structures. Integrating risk resilience and structural efficiency is critical to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities). This Special Issue addresses the urgent need for interdisciplinary research bridging advanced risk modeling, long-term performance optimization, and lifecycle sustainability in civil engineering.

This Special Issue focuses on advancing structural performance design and optimization as a cornerstone of sustainable civil engineering. Its primary aim is to explore cutting-edge technical methodologies to enhance the resistance, resilience, and durability of structures and infrastructure. By prioritizing these performance metrics, we seek to extend the service life of critical infrastructure, reduce lifecycle maintenance demands, and minimize environmental impacts from premature degradation or reconstruction.

The scope of this Special Issue aligns deeply with Sustainability’s mission to publish interdisciplinary research that bridges engineering innovation with sustainable development. Structural resistance (e.g., against seismic, wind, or impact loads), resilience (e.g., rapid recovery from extreme events), and durability (e.g., long-term performance under aging, corrosion or climate stress) are critical to achieving resource-efficient, low-carbon infrastructure, which are key tenets of the UN SDGs. By addressing how advanced design and optimization strategies directly improve infrastructure longevity, this Special Issue contributes to the journal’s focus on actionable sustainability solutions that balance technical excellence with environmental and societal responsibility.

We invite original research articles and critical reviews on topics related (but not limited) to the following:

• AI-driven multi-hazard risk assessment for infrastructure under climate extremes;
• Digital-twin-enabled structural health monitoring and resilience enhancement;
• Machine learning for predictive maintenance of aging sustainable infrastructure;
• Multi-objective optimization balancing cost, safety, and embodied carbon;
• Resilience quantification of civil engineering under natural hazards;
• Performance design and evaluation of protection structures for infrastructures;
• Optimization of low-carbon concrete and bio-based composites in structural design;
• Multi-scale performance optimization and sustainability enhancement of bio-based green building materials (bamboo/timber);
• Synergistic design of bio-based steel composite systems and applications in civil infrastructures;
• Advanced technology-driven innovative design and resilient applications of bio-based structures;
• Intelligent design of engineering structures;
• Engineering structural optimization.

Dr. Hu Xu
Dr. Ming Zhang
Dr. Wenjie Liao
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. 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.

• sustainable infrastructure
• bio-based composites
• extreme environments
• interface engineering
• durability enhancement
• natural hazards
• protection structures
• generative AI
• engineering structural design
• design optimization
• intelligent structural analysis