AI: Driving and Revolutionizing the Built Environment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is profoundly reshaping the built environment across its entire lifecycle from architectural design and computational urban planning to construction, operations, and long-term facility management. In the face of urgent global challenges, including excessive energy consumption, escalating carbon emissions, and climate-change impacts, AI offers powerful, data-driven solutions that traditional methods struggle to match. By enabling intelligent design, predictive analytics, advanced materials discovery, and evidence-based urban renewal, AI supports healthier, more livable, and more sustainable cities signaling a paradigm shift toward resilient and efficient urban futures.

Aim and Scope

This Research Topic explores cutting-edge applications of AI, machine learning, and deep learning that enhance sustainability, resilience, and operational excellence in the built environment. We welcome contributions presenting AI-driven computational design; predictive modeling for energy efficiency and carbon reduction; intelligent systems for urban and infrastructure management; human-centered analytics for health, comfort, and livability; and AI-guided innovations in sustainable building materials. Interdisciplinary studies that integrate AI with digital twins, IoT, and sensor networks spanning architecture, urbanism, civil engineering, and construction are especially encouraged, with emphasis on measurable impact and scalable implementation.

Topics of Interest

o Computational urban planning and AI-driven architectural design
o AI applications for reducing building carbon emissions and addressing climate change
o AI for urban renewal and rural planning
o AI-driven innovations for healthy, livable, and equitable cities
o Advancements in sustainable building materials guided by AI
o Digital twins, IoT, and sensor fusion for real-time monitoring and decision support
o Smart building operations: energy management, demand response, and facility optimization
o Predictive maintenance, asset management, and structural/infrastructure health monitoring
o Construction automation: site monitoring, safety, progress tracking, and productivity
o Responsible and trustworthy AI in AEC: transparency, bias, privacy, and governance

Article Types We invite original research articles, reviews, perspectives, methods, brief research reports, data reports, and case studies.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Built Environment, Sustainability, Urban Planning, Architectural Design

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.