Special Issue on Sustainable and Resilient Underground Infrastructure

Tunnels and underground infrastucutres are crucial for sustainable urban development, particularly in public transportation. However, they are vulnerable to environmental changes, engineering disturbances, and terrorist attacks. Consequently, resilience analysis becomes paramount in assessing and improving the ability of these structures to adapt, withstand disruptions, and recover quickly. Notably, there remains a gap in standardization of resilience analysis, leading to a lack of guidance for engineers and managers. As mega-cities continue to expand, underground infrastructures increasingly form a network pattern, requiring consideration of multiple factors and performance interdependencies.

The development of concise mathematical models for evaluating system performance is important. Analysis frameworks and methods for underground infrastructures' sustainability and resilience are still vague. Hence, there is a need to establish unified definitions, quantification, and evaluation of sustainability and resilience. Rational metrics incorporating unexpected events and utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are instrumental in optimizing resilience assessment.

This special issue invites researchers, engineers, and developers to engage in discussions regarding new ideas, approaches, and challenges related to defining, analyzing and assessing the sustainability and resilience of underground infrastructures. Additionally, it seeks to explore the applications in designing, constructing, and improving resilient underground infrastructures.

Topics Covered：

• Life-cycle resilience of underground infrastructures
• Resilience strategies across disaster phases
• Networked infrastructure resilience
• Innovations in sustainable and resilient underground design
• AI and ML applications for underground resilience
• Economic, social, and environmental dimensions of underground sustainability
• Adaptive strategies for changing global and urban landscapes
• Interplay between underground infrastructure and other infrastructures
• Case studies on enhancing underground resilience

Important Deadlines：

• Submission close: 31 December 2024
• Final decision: 31 July 2025 

Submission Instructions：

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online; please select the special issue “Resilient. Undergr. Infrastr.”.

Guest Editors：

Prof. Dongming ZHANG, Tongji University, China.

Email: 09zhang@tongji.edu.cn 

Prof. Zhenyu YIN, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China.

Email: zhenyu.yin@polyu.edu.hk 

Prof. Farid Laouafa, INERIS Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques, France.

Email: farid.laouafa@ineris.fr