About Smart and Sustainable Built Environment
Aims and scope
The world has never been exposed to such a paradigm shift prior to the emerging industry 4.0 revolution – the governing foundations for shaping and delivering progressive changes for addressing issues embracing Society, Knowledge, Economy, and People. Scientific advances and innovative technologies in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) are key factors in this process, the tenets of which can help countries move towards developing smarter and more sustainable communities. The European Commission’s Industry 5.0 framework extends this evolution by integrating human-centric innovation, resilience, and sustainability, to align technological advancements with societal and environmental needs. In this respect, the nine pillars supporting Industry 4.0 are widely accepted by the research and practice communities to include: the integration of eXtended Reality (XR=VR/AR/MR); where Digital Twins and mainstream Building Information Models in particular are seen as a vehicle for addressing such issues as industry fragmentation, value-driven solutions, decision making, client engagement, and design/process flow to name but a few.
Advanced Simulation, Computer Vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Linked Data all provide immense opportunities for dealing with these challenges; more importantly, perhaps, provide real tangible (evidenced-based) innovative solutions that until now, have never been possible before. These technologies, alongside Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), provide unprecedented opportunities to tackle challenges and drive tangible, evidence-based innovations in the built environment. They are perceived as the ‘true’ enablers of future practice. Examples from other industries such as automotive, aerospace, and oil and gas have provided a showcase of solutions using advanced technologies. However, until relatively recently, AEC has only started to recognise terms such as “golden key” and “golden thread” as part of Digital Twins processes and workflows, recognising their potential in creating interconnected, transparent, and resilient systems.
Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE) links together the various pioneering smart and sustainable targets, bottom lines, endpoints and project deliverables through the whole development cycles and project processes. The objective of the journal is to identify, develop, and promote research and practice in the integration of innovation and sustainability in order to help the AEC industry go through a smooth transition and paradigm shift. The journal highlights holistic problem-solving and decision-making, collaborative system and product development, innovative solutions enhancing sustainability, and mutually beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders of the built environment. It also emphasises international collaboration, inclusivity, emerging challenges, issues arising from developing economies, and knowledge transfer to businesses and industries.
These themes strongly align with global efforts towards smart and sustainable built environments. SASBE is firmly committed to and supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). We encourage research outputs on circular economy principles, climate-responsive design, and digital innovation. We also value interdisciplinary research addressing critical environmental, economic, and social challenges. Through discussions on material reuse, adaptive infrastructure, energy efficiency, and AI-driven urban management, SASBE hosts original contributions to knowledge and provides inputs to policies and industry practices.
SASBE publishes original papers, review papers, case studies, and research reports as well as commentaries, technical notes, book reviews and conference news which focus on the linking of, and the holistic solutions for, key aspects of developing the built environment from project conceptualisation; through building, infrastructure and urban design; construction development; and facility operation and management; to deconstruction, recycling and reuse; for long term sustainable outcomes.
The coverage of the journal includes, but is not limited to:
• Sustainable buildings, infrastructure, districts, cities and the community
• Smart and healthy workplace and living environments
• Smart and sustainable design, construction, and operation of new built facilities and regeneration of existing ones
• Climate-responsive architecture and net-zero infrastructure
• Regenerative urban planning and adaptive reuse
• Circular economy in construction, material passports, closed-loop supply chains
• Strategies for building adaptability, reuse, extended service life
• Lifecycle impact assessment and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)
• Disaster-resilient urban planning and early warning systems
• Nature-based solutions and biomimicry in architecture
• EU Taxonomy and green finance strategies for sustainable urban investment
• Social Innovation and Participatory Design in urban development
• Participatory urban planning through social innovation and stakeholder engagement
Advanced Technologies and Digital Transformation
• Digital Twins, Smart Technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), Network of Sensors and Intelligent Agents
• AI-driven analytics, ML, predictive modelling for adaptable city planning
• Explainable AI (XAI) and bias mitigation for transparent, accountable decision-making
• Blockchain and smart contracts for enhanced transparency in construction and urban governance
• Digital twins and cyber-physical systems in architecture and construction
• IoT-enabled smart buildings and cities
• IoT-enabled monitoring systems for energy efficiency and sustainability
• eXtended Reality (XR) and virtual environments for training and simulation
• AI governance and ethical urbanisation policies
• Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Transfer Learning, Deep Learning and Data Driven Approach for Optimisation of Built Environment
• LLMs and NLP for Sustainable Development, AI-driven automation, decision-making, knowledge extraction for regulatory compliance, data-driven urban planning, construction optimisation
• NLP and LLMs in regulatory compliance, smart contracts, automated knowledge extraction for AEC
• openBIM, linked data and semantic web for automating design and code checking
Next-Generation Construction and Circularity
• Offsite Construction, Modern Methods of Construction, Additive Manufacturing, DfMA
• Circularity in the Built Environment, Material reuse, regenerative design, circular construction strategies
• Next-Generation Construction & Manufacturing, Offsite construction, 3D printing, Design for Adaptability (DfA), Disassembly (DfD), Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA), and Circularity
• Building Adaptability and Lifecycle Extension, Adaptive reuse, modular construction, deconstruction strategies
• Circular economy-driven strategies for material reuse, deconstruction, lifecycle extension
• Smart Contracts, Distributed Ledger Technologies and Blockchain for AEC Industry
Sustai
