Technology-Based Embodied Carbon Emissions Tracking and Monitoring Systems for Buildings: Review of Systems, Benefits, Limitations, Challenges and Future Directions

Embodied carbon (EC) of buildings has been gaining attention among researchers and the industry to achieve the carbon targets by 2050. With this interest, the development of technology-based EC tracking and monitoring systems for buildings has increased. The existing literature lacks a comprehensive review of technology-based EC tracking and monitoring systems, their benefits, limitations, and adoption challenges related to buildings. Thus, this study conducted a systematic literature review, with studies published between 1996 and 2025. The results revealed 16 systems, most of which are integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT) and Building Information Modelling (BIM). The results identified 6 benefits, 7 key limitations, 17 adoption challenges, and future research directions. By integrating these findings, a conceptual framework was developed that highlights the strategic roles of key stakeholders in the effective implementation of these systems. Findings revealed that the key limitations are included in lack of a feasible EC emission reduction target, lack of an early-stage EC emissions reduction decision-making process, difficulty in tracing the responsible stakeholders to reduce the EC throughout the whole supply chain of buildings, limited automated third-party verification process and transparency issues, uncertainty of the use data, limited system boundary and the scope of works and lack of industry-level applications to test the developed systems. The challenges include data quality, scalability and cost, technology, organisational, and external challenges. The findings can serve as a benchmark for academics, researchers and practitioners to guide future developments in effectively tracking and monitoring the EC in buildings.