Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence for Advancing Smart Green Building and City Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

The pace of climate change is accelerating beyond previous scientific predictions, and its impacts on communities are vast and often unimaginable. This urgency underscores the critical need to transform our buildings and cities into smart, green, and resilient environments. Fortunately, the rapid evolution of emerging digital technologies offers unprecedented opportunities to mitigate climate change impacts and enhance the resilience of urban infrastructure. Among these technologies, Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence (AI) stand out as powerful tools to make cities smarter, greener, and more adaptable to the challenges posed by climate change.

Despite their potential, research on the applications of Digital Twins and AI in addressing climate change remains limited. Much of the existing work focuses on technologies that are inadequate in addressing the speed and scale of climate change impacts. This research aims to explore how Digital Twins and AI can be effectively integrated throughout the lifecycle of urban infrastructure—including construction, operation, maintenance, and renewal—to create environments that are not only technologically advanced but also environmentally sustainable and resilient to climate-related challenges.

The primary goal of this research is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue that generates actionable insights for designing and implementing resilient, sustainable, and technologically innovative cities of the future. Contributions are welcome in the form of original research articles, review articles, case studies, and conceptual pieces investigating the applications of Digital Twins and AI across various aspects of urban infrastructure. The ultimate aim is to advance knowledge and practice in making cities greener, smarter, and more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Dr. Henry Abanda
Dr. Michel Mbessa
Topic Editors