Digital carbon-information continuity in the built environment: a systematic critical review of lifecycle scope, measurement, reporting, and verification readiness, and governance signals

초록

Decarbonisation in construction and the built environment increasingly depends on digital systems, yet it remains unclear whether these systems support carbon-information continuity across lifecycle stages, organisational handovers, and governance contexts. This review examines digital technologies used to generate, update, exchange, and govern carbon-relevant information across the built-asset lifecycle, including building information modelling–linked life cycle assessment workflows, digital twins and Internet of Things-enabled monitoring systems, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and optimisation tools, blockchain-enabled traceability systems, and geographic information systems, stock, and scenario platforms. Using a systematic critical synthesis informed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and covering 109 peer-reviewed studies published 2020-2025, it combines structured coding with close full-text analysis across lifecycle stage, carbon domain, decision endpoint, whole-life integration, measurement, reporting, and verification readiness, and governance relevance. The findings show that digital capability is strongest in bounded analytics, workflow support, and selected reporting and traceability functions, but weaker where carbon information must remain aligned across lifecycle transitions to support review, benchmarking, compliance, and audit. Although many studies broaden lifecycle coverage, fewer demonstrate integration between embodied and operational carbon, governed updating across transitions, or outputs robust enough beyond local analytical settings. Overall, the literature shows greater progress in making carbon visible than in making it consistently verifiable and actionable across governance settings. On this basis, the review derives a research agenda for governance-continuous, whole-life carbon stewardship, and concludes that digitally enabled decarbonisation depends less on proliferating digital tools than on maintaining carbon-information continuity across lifecycle and governance boundaries. © 2026 Elsevier Ltd