Studies show that Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies can enhance compliance with COVID-19 guidelines within the parties in the construction industry in the future and mitigate job loss. It implies that mitigating job loss improves the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) (eliminate poverty). There is a paucity of literature concerning 4IR technologies application and COVID-19 impact on South Africa’s construction industry. Thus, this paper investigates the impacts of the pandemic on the sector and the roles of digital technologies in mitigating job loss in future pandemics. Data were collected via virtual semi-structured interviews. The participants proffered unexplored insights into the impact of the pandemic on the sector and the possible roles that 4IR technology can play in mitigating the spread of the virus within the sector. Findings show that the sector was hit, especially the low-income earners, threatens to achieve Goal 1, despite government institutions’ intervention, such as economic support programmes, health and safety guidelines awareness, and medical facilities. Findings group the emerged impacts into health and safety, environmental, economic, productivity, social, and legal and insurance issues in South Africa. The study shows that technology can be advantageous to improving achieving Goal 1 in a pandemic era due to limited job loss.

The widespread application of computer-aided production technology can effectively and directly assist enterprises in completing all aspects of production smoothly and efficiently. With the rapid development of 3D printing application technology, research and promotion of new material manufacturing applications have basically begun. This article mainly focuses on analyzing two technologies: computer-aided technology and 3D printing technology.

This paper studies the patent race problem of communication enterprises investing in communication technologies, and constructs a portfolio optimization model which considers the expected returns, investment risks, and replacement costs, in order to achieve the dual goals of maximizing the net investment income of backward enterprises and minimizing the expected investment risk. Through numerical experimental analysis, the optimal investment portfolio strategy under different risk levels and the impact of different risk levels on the net income of lagging company are obtained. The research results show that due to the backward research in the first stage of the backward enterprises, when their own investment decision-making power is relatively high, they can focus on the development of self-interested key technology areas in order to achieve the victory of the patent race.