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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2021.
Special Issue Editor
Interests: BIM (Building Information Modelling); ICT (Information and Communication Technology); artificial intelligence; big data analytics; digital twin; project delivery method; construction management; ROI (Return on Investment)
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The innovative development efforts of digital technologies are breaking the traditional boundaries of the construction industry. The digitalization of the construction industry, represented by BIM, should not just produce a simple electronic file type report; it must be able to link, search, and analyze information based on objects. BIM has not just recently been developed; its level and field of use are diverse. In addition, the value of the information available in the construction industry can be maximized by integrating BIM with the latest ICT technology. These technical endeavors require a multidisciplinary approach in order to examine, explore, and critically engage with issues in the construction industry. This Special Issue welcomes all technology developments, case studies, empirical investigations, and experimentations related to the integration of BIM and ICT for sustainable building projects. The scope of the work includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Integration of BIM and ICT;
- Digital technologies and lean construction;
- Sensing technologies and quality control;
- Automation and robotics;
- Big data analytics for sustainable building;
- Real-time location intelligence;
- Real-time monitoring of building environment;
- Assessment of information value.
Prof. Dr. Jaejun Kim
Guest Editor
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 papers will be 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 1900 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(Building Information Modelling)
- ICT(Information and Communication Technology)
- DfMA(Design for Manufacturing and Assembly)
- AR/VR(Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality)
- big data
- artificial intelligence
- digital twin
- RoI(Return on Investment)
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Authors: James K.C. Chen 1 and Han-Hsi Ho2,*
Affiliation:
1Department of Business Administration, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan; [email protected]
2Department of Business Administration, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan; [email protected]; [email protected]
Long Abstract:
COVID-19 pandemic has been rapidly spreading around the world since early 2020 with significant impacts on the hospitals, increasing the demand for specific treatment facilities. Limitations exist on traditional hospitals’ physical building structures, facilities such as negative pressure inpatient isolation wards, and medical information system to address the needs of special pandemic patient. This extraordinary time calls for a more complete evolved system for smart hospital management.
Since the early 2000, Building Information Modelling (BIM) has emerged to replace the traditional computer aided design and drafting (CADD) for a wide variety of development and infrastructure projects. In context of industry 4.0 trends that included a variety of smart manufacturing and smart asset management functionalities, the availability of new information management technology has influenced not only the methods and techniques such as digital twin, but also wholistic governance and management processes and strategies (Li, 2016). One of the major BIM Uses towards management of physical assets is its lifecycle contribution towards asset information management system (AIMS), which contains geometric and non-geometric information derived from the information accumulated throughout the project lifecycle prior to the completion and commissioning of the physical built assets (Sacks et al., 2018). As management of smart buildings from an organizational perspective is a key component of the Industry 4.0 development, smart hospitals are among institutions that can benefit from an evolved information system, as such system would cover information pertaining to physical and digital assets, as well as information from clients (patients) or suppliers that would impact the management of operations of a smart hospital (Jamil et al., 2019; Thakare & Khire, 2014).
The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has brought forth unforeseeable and unprecedented impact on medical service behavior as well as all aspects of information management with the smart hospital (Aman, et al. 2021; Chang, 2021). Moreover, those with foresight such as Bill Gates have predicted and warned that such pandemic may become greater in scale and dramatically more devastating in the future (TED Conferences, LLC., 2015). Fig. 1 below shows the sequential relationship of BIM’s paradigm shift and COVID-19 event as major triggers for the next generation of AIMS practices. Specifically, COVID’s known observable impacts on the smart hospital asset management are manifold, including:
- Shifting demands of facilities within existing hospitals to cover the surge of COVID needs (e.g. conversion to negative pressure inpatient isolation wards, quarantine / isolation spaces, multifunctional, use spaces, etc.);
- Increasing needs to provide patient, medical staff and equipment storage space in response to increased forecasted COVID-19 patient flow and decrease in non-critical medical treatments; and
- Growing importance of real-time management and analysis of asset information, whose current aspects (broader categories) and criteria (individual indicators) may fall short in satisfying the need for fast response, the blurred boundary of room/space definition, and other not yet foreseeable challenges which demands more systematic research.
In this context, it becomes imperative to reexamine the next evolution of Asset Information Management in the era of COVID-19, especially as the research on BIM-based AIMS for smart hospital aspects and criteria in the era of the pandemic are currently limited. Preliminary literature review indicates a gap in smart asset categorization that are beyond individual organizations or institutions, which oftentimes directly derive from empirical experience rather than structured research based on existing literatures and inter-organizational case studies (Kayleigh, 2020). Scientific quantitative research utilizing methods such as Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has also largely focused on individual or design and construction stages rather than post-completion, asset-focused stages (Tan et al., 2021). Moreover, with the predominant view and tendencies to establish predominant and consistent standards to minimize changes to AIMS, few literature sources exist linking BIM-based asset information management to black swan (unforeseeable) events, various types of real-time simulations and flexible response strategies, thus limiting the current capability for BIM-AIMS to contribute to the holistic smart hospital management in the era of COVID-19.
While international BIM-AIMS cases such as World Health Organization (WHO) Pan American Healthcare Organizations (PAHO), European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) and National Health Services Scotland (NHSScotland) exist, there are gaps of industry practices and research in COVID-response. These research gaps have thus motivate this study to establish filtered, categorized and prioritized criteria for managing smart hospital’s assets via building information “management” by mapping asset management criteria between current BIM-AIMS competency and needs relevant to COVID-19 in context of wholistic lifecycle assessment (LCA). This paper aims to answer the following research questions:
- How to synthesize, organize and prioritize smart hospital criteria in context of a newly present event (the COVID-19 pandemic)?
- In context COVID-19, how can smart hospitals shift its approach to improve their current BIM-based asset management?
Through the MCDM (multiple criteria decision making) methodology, primarily fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) which has been proven effective on relevant yet narrower scope studies (Lee, 2010; Wang, 2008), the study would compile, filter, consolidate and prioritize a list of smart hospital aspects and criteria, which are translatable to BIM-AIMS categories and parameters. By answering these research questions, this paper will contribute to the theories and industries as follows:
- Theory contribution: to enrich MCDM methodologies (especially fuzzy AHP) by extensive literature review and application to BIM-based asset management framework in event-based (COVID-19) research.
- Industry contribution: to inform industry practices of consolidating and prioritizing smart hospital’s asset information in context of COVID-19, whilst providing insights towards future information management standards that are resilient to support these practices in this time of uncertainties.
Keywords: Smart Hospital, Building Information Modeling (BIM), COVID-19, Asset Information Management System (AIMS), Industry 4.0, Digital Twin