New Advances in Urban Cultural Heritage Knowledge and Management

Dear Colleagues,

Knowledge, conservation, and enhancement of urban Cultural Heritage are becoming increasingly important for the sustainable future of our cities. Cultural Heritage sites represent the historical and cultural identity of our cities, shape their current appearance, enhance tourism with effects on the socio-economic development of the area and constitute our legacy to support decisions in the process of urban transformation.

Geomatics and digital technologies have proven to be effective for protection, conservation, management and valorization of Cultural Heritage. Integrated digital surveys allow the acquisition of different typology of data and recent advances in Building Information Modelling (BIM) enable the creation of complex information systems that combine data from different sources, leading to the creation of digital twins useful for documentation, analysis, management, monitoring the state of conservation, as well as planning of maintenance interventions.

Furthermore, the combination of data from different scale and sources and the integration of BIM and GIS (Geographic Information System) environments, provide much more thorough knowledge both of the  Cultural Heritage sites and their urban context. Data management in a GIS/HBIM environment allows the spatial representation of the objects and the description of their context and their relations with the urban or territorial surroundings; on the other hand, integrated data management can provide more in-depth and complex descriptions of urban processes and phenomena.

This Special Issue of Urban Science aims at investigating current trends and perspectives in the digitization of urban Cultural Heritage, by collecting new research and innovative applications, experimental works, technological advances, reviews and/or applied case studies. Papers on, but not limited to, the following topics are encouraged:

• Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM);
• Integration of BIM and GIS (Geographic Information System);
• City Information Modelling (CIM);
• 3D survey and documentation of Cultural Heritage;
• 3D modelling of Urban Cultural Heritage;
• Management of Urban Cultural Heritage;
• Digital twins;
• Advanced data processing technologies for valorization and conservation of Cultural Heritage;
• Data management and database implementation;
• Geometric and semantic interoperability;
• Multiscale analysis.

Dr. Nazarena Bruno
Dr. Cristiana Achille
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1800 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.