Fuente: Sustainability - Revista científica (MDPI) Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 2614: A Systematic Literature Review of Internet of Things (IoT) Applications in Sustainable Construction Project Management
Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su18052614
Authors:
Ali Tighnavard Balasbaneh
Willy Sher

The construction industry is under mounting pressure to enhance its sustainability performance. Increasing project complexity and risk require real-time data collection, monitoring, and assistance in decision making via the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has emerged as a critical enabling technology to overcome these hurdles. This study provides a bibliometric and thematic overview of IoT applications in sustainable construction project management to identify research trends, key themes, and practical implications for project managers. We used a structured screening process to analyze peer-reviewed journal papers, conference articles, and book chapters listed in the Scopus database. We identified 77 publications published between 2019 and 2025. Using VOSviewer_1.6.20_exe, we analyzed publication trends, source influences, geographical dispersion, and keyword co-occurrence patterns. Since 2023, research output and citation impact have increased dramatically, with sustainability, project management, and IoT serving as the main conceptual foundations recorded. Real-time monitoring, wireless sensor networks, safety improvement, BIM and digital twin integration, and resource and energy optimization are the five main application domains recognized using thematic synthesis. This shows a marked transition from standalone sensing applications to integrated, intelligent, and predictive systems that enable data-driven decision making throughout the construction lifecycle. This review highlights the ongoing difficulties associated with data quality, sensor dependability, system interoperability, and energy limitations. IoT is progressing from a support technology to a core operational and managerial infrastructure for sustainable construction, with major consequences for project management and future research.