Sustainable and Digital Transformation of Road Infrastructures

Dear Colleagues,

Traditional construction processes and materials used for road infrastructure no longer respond to the needs of a constantly changing society. Therefore, a sustainable and digital transformation of road pavements is essential to deal with limited available resources and the need for more efficient construction processes integrating sustainable and intelligent materials.

Road infrastructures are essential to how our society lives in a global market, and their sustainability is essential to ensure adequate living conditions for future generations. All current efforts to promote sustainability are crucial to meet most UN sustainable development goals.

The digital transformation of road infrastructures is also imperative to meet the challenges of competitiveness and productivity at the international level. Several digital tools have recently been developed to deal with the high amounts of data available and to support road construction and life cycle analyses. These tools will facilitate the introduction of the digital twin and building information modeling (BIM) concepts in road infrastructures, using research in cutting-edge digital areas such as augmented reality, sensing and monitoring, AI, machine learning, big data, and IoT, among others.

The present Special Issue aims to gather a series of manuscripts related to sustainable road infrastructures and their digital transformation. We invite submissions on recycled, bio-derived, and alternative sustainable materials; low energy-consuming technologies; and the life-cycle assessment of road paving technologies and materials. The road infrastructure of the future should be prepared for the demands of climate change and sustainability challenges. New digital technologies and intelligent materials are essential to achieve that objective, as they sense and monitor the road to obtain real-time data and improve asset management. Therefore, manuscripts focusing on digital twins, BIM, augmented reality, sensing and monitoring, AI, machine learning, big data, IoT, or the social aspects of their use in transport infrastructure are welcome. Additionally, papers concerned with the policies and implementation of sustainable and digital practices would be appreciated.

Dr. Hugo M. R. D. Silva
Dr. Joel R. M. Oliveira
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. Infrastructures 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.