Smart Construction

ISSN: 2960-2025 (Print)

ISSN: 2960-2033 (Online)

CODEN: SCABAK

CiteScore 2025: 1.5

About This Journal
Special Issues
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AI for Construction Materials Innovation: from Design to Performance
Special Issue Editor:   Xiaohong Zhu, Xingquan Wang, Zhi Cheng, Ruoqi Zhao
Submission Deadline:  31 October 2027
Building Resilience and Sustainability in Civil Engineering with Smart Construction
Special Issue Editor:   Mohd Rosli Mohd Hasan, Hui Yao, Ali Jamshidi, Seyed Reza Omranian
Submission Deadline:  31 December 2026
Intelligent and High-Performance Computing for Civil Infrastructure Disaster Mitigation
Special Issue Editor:   Xiuli Du, Mi Zhao, Junqi Zhang, Jiaxu Shen, Shuqian Duan, Yanling Qu
Submission Deadline:  31 May 2027
Topic Collections
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Construction Site Monitoring and Optimization using Digital Twins
Topic Collection Editor:   Byungjoo Choi, Muhyiddine Jradi
Intelligent Condition Assessment and Performance Prediction Towards Resilient and Sustainable Pavement Structure
Topic Collection Editor:   Tao Ma, Songtao Lv, Zhen Leng, Yuqing Zhang, Siqi Wang, Hui Yao
Latest Articles
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Monitoring-data-driven reliability assessment of bridge infrastructure: model updating, uncertainty quantification and maintenance decision-making
Yulei Bai,Bingxu Duan,Pinghe Ni,Qiang Han,Jun Li,Xuanyi Zhang,Qiang Li,Wangji Yan
Review23 Sep 2026OPEN ACCESS

Monitoring-data-driven reliability assessment of bridge infrastructure uses structural health monitoring, inspection, load testing, bridge weigh-in-motion, visual/non-destructive testing (NDT) data and digital twins to characterize evolving condition and failure risk. This review asks how monitoring data are transformed into reliability inputs, how model updating methods complement one another, how limited data support time-dependent reliability and rare-event estimation, and how updated reliability supports maintenance decisions. A Scopus-based search of English journal papers published from 2020 through the 30 June 2026 search cutoff was conducted using keywords on bridges, monitoring data, model updating, reliability/risk assessment and maintenance. After thematic screening, 114 papers were coded and critically synthesized, comprising 56 core bridge studies and 58 supplementary studies retained only for method transfer or comparison. The review establishes a technical chain from monitoring data to structural state characterization, model updating, uncertainty quantification, reliability/risk assessment and maintenance decision-making, and formulates a probabilistic framework based on observation models, state/parameter updating, posterior predictive reliability and risk- and loss-based decision-making. The findings show that finite-element updating contributes physical interpretability, Bayesian updating supports evidence fusion and posterior uncertainty, filtering enables online recursion, surrogate modelling and machine learning reduce computational burden, and digital twins are meaningful only when data assimilation, uncertainty propagation, reliability calculation and decision feedback are integrated. Future work should strengthen traceable data-to-limit-state mappings, explicit treatment of model-form and measurement errors, tail failure-probability estimation under sparse monitoring data, and closed-loop reliability-informed bridge maintenance.

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YOLO-SafeAttr: improving the ability to identify unsafe conditions of objects in construction scenes by using visual attribute representation
Yichuan Deng,Zile Deng,Hengyun Zhang,Hui Deng,Vincent Jielong Gan
Article22 Sep 2026OPEN ACCESS

Unsafe conditions of objects are major contributors to construction accidents such as falls, strikes, and collapses. Although traditional inspections and existing vision methods can detect objects, they often fail to infer their potential risks. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a deep identification method integrating visual attribute representations. We introduce the high-level concept of visual unsafe attributes to describe hazards arising from an object’s shape, state, and environmental context. Based on accident text analysis, a visual attribute system covering four risk types—fall, strike, collapse, and rollover—is established, and the VALD dataset is built by extending SODA dataset. An integrated detection framework based on YOLOv11 is then developed to achieve end-to-end joint inference of object locations and unsafe attributes. The model is trained and evaluated on VALD. Experiments show mAP@50 of 84.8%, recall of 91%, and F1-score of 0.82, with improvements of 21.1%, 33.6%, and 0.175 over models without attention mechanisms. These results demonstrate that visual attribute representation and attention significantly enhance risk feature extraction. The resulting dynamic risk assessment system quantifies object-strike scenarios spatiotemporally, providing a real-time and interpretable safety monitoring solution for construction sites.

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Development of high-performance alkali-stabilized earthen composites reinforced with natural fibers: coupled thermal and mechanical behavior
Mohamed Char,Youssef Khrissi,Amine Tilioua
Article31 Aug 2026OPEN ACCESS

This study еxрlоrеs thе dеvеlорmеnt оf sustаinаblе, еаrth-bаsеd building mаtеriаls thаt hаvе bееn орtimizеd using а duаl аррrоасh invоlving аlkаlinе stаbilizаtiоn аnd rеinfоrсеmеnt with lосаlly sоurсеd nаturаl fibеrs, resulting in composite materials with enhanced thermomechanical properties. Thе аim is tо еnhаnсе thе mесhаniсаl аnd thermophysical performance оf соmрrеssеd еаrth briсks whilе minimizing thе еnvirоnmеntаl imрасt оf thе соnstruсtiоn industry. Sоil frоm sоuth-еаstеrn Mоrоссо wаs сhеmiсаlly stаbilizеd аnd mixеd with vаrying реrсеntаgеs (0%–8%) оf lignосеllulоsiс fibеrs (реtiоlе, fig trее, аnd аlfа). Exреrimеntаl rеsults shоwеd а rеduсtiоn in bulk dеnsity оf uр tо 30%, lеаding to significant improvements in thеrmаl insulаtiоn, with minimum thеrmаl соnduсtivitiеs оf 0.32 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ fоr fig trее аnd 0.50 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ fоr аlfа. Іn tеrms оf mесhаniсs, сrасk bridging wаs оbsеrvеd tо hаvе а rеinfоrсing еffесt, with орtimаl соmрrеssivе strеngth (6.4 MPа) аnd tеnsilе strеngth (1.8 MPа) асhiеvеd аt fibеr соntеnts bеtwееn 2% аnd 3%. This synеrgy bеtwееn stаbilizаtiоn аnd biо-rеinfоrсеmеnt рrоvidеs аn есо-еffiсiеnt, high-реrfоrmаnсе, аnd есоnоmiсаlly viаblе соnstruсtiоn sоlutiоn thаt is раrtiсulаrly wеll-suitеd tо thе сlimаtiс соnditiоns of arid and semi ardi regions.

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AIstructure-Copilot: assistant for generative AI-driven intelligent design of building structures
Sizhong Qin ,Wenjie Liao ,Shengnan Huang ,Kongguo Hu ,Zhuang Tan ,Yuan Gao ,Xinzheng Lu
Article04 Mar 2024OPEN ACCESS
The rapid advancement of intelligent design technology in building structures has been primarily implemented in engineering practice through the use of local or cloud-based software to offer intelligent design services. However, local intelligent design services are time-consuming and require high-end hardware, whereas cloud-based designs fail to integrate seamlessly with existing design processes. Consequently, providing convenient intelligent design support for engineering practices is challenging. To address these problems, this study proposes a local–cloud collaborative intelligent design technology called AIstructure-Copilot, which serves as a structural intelligent design assistant. In this system, the local end performs routine graphical operations that align with engineers' design habits, whereas the cloud end executes generative artificial intelligence (AI) for intelligent design, thereby enhancing efficiency and effectively combining the strengths of both services. Specifically, this technology achieves a high level of automation and intelligence throughout the entire process, encompassing architectural design, structural design, and the establishment and execution of structural analysis models. This is accomplished by constructing a local–cloud collaborative mode, introducing a comprehensive data transmission format, and developing a cloud interface for generative AI algorithms. The effectiveness of the AIstructure-Copilot model was validated using a typical case study. The results demonstrate that AI design improves design efficiency by more than tenfold, satisfies the regulatory requirements of design schemes, and exhibits a discrepancy of approximately 20% when compared with designs created by competent engineers.
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Can ChatGPT assist in cost analysis and bid pricing in construction estimating? A pilot study using a bridge rehabilitation project
Alireza Ghasemi ,Fei Dai
Article04 Sep 2024OPEN ACCESS
As the large language model Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) recently came into being and has attracted much attention, this study examined its efficacy in analyzing the cost of work items and estimating bid prices in construction estimating. This study utilized a rehabilitation project for the Beaver Dam Road Bridge in Pennsylvania, USA as a case study. The authors integrated ChatGPT-4 to handle bid pricing for five specific work items: concrete and formwork, reinforcement, structure backfill, membrane waterproofing system installation, and borrow excavation. Prior knowledge regarding production rates, labor hourly rates, equipment rates, and material rates was used as input. Prompts and instructions were established for interactive execution of the cost estimation. The model's outputs were compared with the ground truth and the bids from three bidders available at Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT)’s website. The comparative analysis revealed that GPT-4 holds the potential for construction estimating with reasonable accuracy. However, it is also essential to recognize the consistency and reliability issues that may exist, which would affect ChatGPT’s performance in new scenarios.
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Frontier AI in computational civil engineering: a review of graph, sequence, physics-informed deep learning, and beyond (2020–2025)
Linghan Song,Jiansheng Fan,Shenxiang Zeng,Chen Wang
Review26 Jan 2026OPEN ACCESS

Structural computational analysis in civil engineering increasingly demands efficient, robust, and physics-aware methodologies capable of addressing non-Euclidean geometries, history-dependent behaviors, and multi-scale problems that remain challenging for conventional numerical approaches. Recent advances in frontier artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have shown promising potential to overcome these limitations. This paper presents a comprehensive review of frontier AI applications in computational structural analysis from 2020 to 2025, focusing on graph neural networks (GNNs), sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) and Transformer-based architectures, and physics-informed methods. We synthesize fundamental concepts, typical model variants, and representative applications across diverse tasks, including constitutive modeling, static and dynamic structural analysis, data reconstruction, and parameter inversion. Furthermore, we identify critical research gaps and discuss potential future directions within each model family. A quantitative analysis of the reviewed studies is conducted, categorizing them by publication year, application task, and adopted model type. Common challenges regarding benchmarking, empirical–physics trade-offs, scalability and generalizability are summarized. Finally, we highlight several promising techniques for advancing intelligent structural computation and promoting practical engineering deployment.

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