Dear Colleagues,

The 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) is redefining education, training and practice in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. To survive and thrive in the imminent Industry 4.0 era, the industry is crawling out of its traditionally change-resisting cocoons of culture, mindset and attitudes to now embrace digital technologies, albeit at a very slow pace, relative to the leaps and bounds experienced in other sectors. To date, much attention and research has been focused on the applications of digital technologies in the industry. Building information modelling (BIM) has been at the forefront of the digital revolution in the industry, followed by digital visualisation (VR, AR, MR), offsite manufacturing, robotics, computer aided manufacturing (CAM), drones, 3D laser scanning, 3D concrete printing, artificial intelligence (AI) and, lately, the Internet of Things (IoT). However, there has been little attention and research on semantic geospatial web (SGW) technologies—the platform that supports the web-based digital technology revolution in the industry. Simply defined, the SGW is the back-end web platform that comprises the server, database and application systems responsible for creating, storing, securing, retrieving, integrating, sharing and manipulating parametric, specifying and geospatial digital data to meet various information and communication technology (ICT) needs. This Special Issue of the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-information (IJGI) aims to promote and disseminate cutting-edge research and case studies that explore the nature and applications of the geospatial technologies or that advance the uptake of digital technologies in the AEC sector. Potential topics include but are not limited to the subthemes under the following overarching themes:

Theme 1: Digital technologies in construction:

• Building information management and building information modelling (BIM), including 3D, 4D, 5D, 6D, 7D and xD modelling;
• Digital data visualisation/immersive learning technologies in construction, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR);
• Robotics and automation in construction, including 3D printing, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and prefabrication/offsite manufacturing;
• Digital twins and digital reflections in construction;
• Optical character recognition (OCR), voice recognition and immersive interface application in construction;
• Big data analytics, machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI)/neural networks (NN).
  

Theme 2: Semantic Geospatial Web technologies

• Geographical information systems (GIS);
• Location-based management systems (LBMS) and social networks (LBSN);
• Blockchain, automating trust and smart contract in construction, including crowd-funding and financial technologies (Fintech);
• Spatial analysis;
• Internet of Things (IoT) and real-time sensors and related technologies in construction;
• Cloud-based construction project management, including enterprise resource management, distributed teams;
• Smart buildings/building automation;
• Smart cities (SC)/socio-semantic analysis (SSA)/city information modelling (CIM);
• Wearable technologies in construction;
• Global positioning system applications in construction;
• Drones/autonomous systems (AS)/un-manned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in construction;
• 3D laser scanning and cartesian point visualisation in construction and facility management;
• Web-based cyber security issues.
  

Theme 3: Digital futures in construction

• Future state of construction and implications for research, education, practice and policy;
• Constraints to digital technologies uptake in construction;
• Key drivers/enablers of digital technologies in construction;
• Preparing for construction digital future: Repositioning strategies for leveraging strengths to optimising opportunities and minimising exposures to imminent threats.

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 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. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 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 1700 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.

• artificial intelligence (AI)
• automation
• building information modelling (BIM)
• computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
• digital technologies
• geospatial information systems (GIS)
• Industry 4.0
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• 3D laser scanning
• semantic geospatial web