The safe, resilient, and sustainable management of the built environment depends on the ability to sense, interpret, and respond to the evolving condition of structures and infrastructure systems. Conventional structural monitoring approaches typically rely on discrete electrical sensors and periodic inspections, which often provide limited spatial resolution, are vulnerable to electromagnetic interference, and can be costly to deploy and maintain across large or distributed assets. Fiber-optic sensing (FOS) technologies offer a powerful alternative, enabling continuous, distributed, and long-term monitoring of structural behavior over meter- to kilometer-scale lengths with high spatial and temporal resolution.

By exploiting light propagation in optical fibers, fiber-optic sensors—such as Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs), interferometric sensors, and distributed sensing technologies (e.g., distributed strain, temperature, and acoustic sensing)—provide intrinsic advantages for structural sensing, including durability in harsh environments, multiplexing capability, and suitability for embedding within or retrofitting existing structures. These characteristics make FOS particularly well suited for applications in structural health monitoring, asset management of infrastructure networks, in-service performance assessment, and the lifecycle management of buildings, bridges, tunnels, pipelines, and geotechnical systems.

Recent advances in sensing architectures, fiber designs, interrogation techniques, and protective packaging have expanded the applicability of fiber-optic sensing beyond laboratory-scale demonstrations toward field-ready systems for real-world structural applications. At the same time, growing interest in data-driven asset management, digital twins, and smart infrastructure has highlighted the need for robust integration of distributed sensing data with structural models, uncertainty quantification, and decision-support frameworks. However, challenges remain in translating high-resolution fiber-optic measurements into actionable information for structural control, maintenance planning, and whole-life asset management, particularly for large and heterogeneous infrastructure networks.

This Research Topic aims to bring together contributions that advance fiber-optic sensing technologies specifically for structural sensing, control, and asset management in the built environment. We seek studies that demonstrate how fiber-optic sensing systems are designed, deployed, and interpreted to support structural health monitoring, performance assessment, active or semi-active control, and infrastructure management across the asset lifecycle. Emphasis is placed on field validation, system integration, sensor placement strategies, data interpretation, and uncertainty-aware decision-making, rather than on sensor development in isolation.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Fiber-optic sensing for structural health monitoring: Applications of FBG, interferometric, and distributed fiber-optic sensing for monitoring strain, deformation, vibration, damage evolution, and environmental effects in civil and geotechnical structures.

• Sensor system design and deployment in the built environment: Design, placement, protection, and long-term operation of fiber-optic sensor networks for buildings and infrastructure, including retrofit applications and monitoring of existing assets.

• Data interpretation, uncertainty, and decision support: Signal processing, outlier detection, uncertainty representation and propagation, and integration of fiber-optic sensing data with structural models, digital twins, and asset management systems.

• Infrastructure networks and whole-life asset management: Use of fiber-optic sensing to support condition-based maintenance, resilience assessment, sustainability evaluation, and management of networks of assets.

We welcome Original Research Articles, Review Articles, and Perspectives that demonstrate clear relevance to structural sensing, control, and asset management within the built environment. Submissions should provide rigorous validation, meaningful comparison of sensing systems or data interpretation approaches where appropriate, and explicit discussion of how fiber-optic sensing contributes to improved understanding, management, and sustainability of engineered structures and infrastructure systems.

Articles

Frontiers in Built Environment

Structural Sensing, Control and Asset Management