The importance of infrastructure sustainability cannot be overemphasized. Minor changes regarding infrastructure sustainability may result in significant environmental impacts on society, due to the key roles and critical functions of civil systems. In response to persistent environment deterioration, severe resource depletion, and more frequent natural disasters, infrastructure sustainability has been drawing increased attention from governments, industry, and academia over the last three decades. In particular, life cycle-based sustainability performance is of significant interest. Despite significant advances in research, formidable challenges and barriers to achieve sustainability still exist associated with the life cycle stages (e.g., design, construction, operation, maintenance, and rehabilitation) of infrastructure systems. For example, how to precisely implement life cycle performance assessment to select design schemes remains an open-ended issue for civil infrastructure systems, often due to the associated uncertainties and inherent complexities. The sustainability issues related to the end of infrastructure service life (e.g., deconstruction, demolition, reuse, recycling, or disposal) are yet to be sufficiently addressed. In addition, how to incorporate resilience into the framework of infrastructure sustainability represents a new challenge. These research gaps have negatively confined the progress of sustainable infrastructure development. However, various research attempts are being made to overcome the challenges linked to different life cycle stages of infrastructure systems.

This special issue welcomes both original research and review articles that explore theoretical breakthroughs, technical advances, and best practices pertinent to life cycle environmental sustainability performance of physical infrastructure systems. While theoretical developments can help to guide more extended understanding on sustainability, technical methods will assist in achieving specific sustainability goals. Industry practices can test, verify, promote beneficial instruments, and identify the underlying deficiencies. These three types of developments can mutually support each other to shape sustainable communities.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Life cycle analysis and assessment in civil engineering
• Sustainable design schemes, construction methods, and operation strategies to enhance infrastructure life cycle sustainability performance
• Sustainable materials for life cycle sustainability performance improvements
• Stochastic life cycle modeling methods for infrastructure systems
• Sustainability performance during deconstruction, demolition, reuse, recycling or disposal of infrastructure systems, and/or components
• Incorporating resilience into sustainability for infrastructure systems
• Advanced performance metrics for infrastructure sustainability assessment
• Effects of codes, policies, and regulations related to infrastructure sustainability
• Public-private partnerships for sustainable infrastructure development
• Emerging technologies/methods, e.g., building information modeling (BIM) and artificial intelligence, to assist in life cycle sustainability of infrastructure systems