Future of assessing and reporting sustainability in the construction industry: moving from static to real-time data

The construction industry accounts for around 40% of the natural resource consumption, 36% of the greenhouse gas emissions, 40% of the energy demand and 30% of the waste generated worldwide yearly. Thus, sustainable development has gained significant attention all around the globe. Assessing and Reporting Sustainability (ARS) is vital to formulating strategies for achieving sustainable development goals. The existing practices of ARS predominantly rely on static data, such as published literature, reports or databases. Such static data presents numerous issues, including inaccuracies, outdatedness over time, and a lack of transparency. These result in producing inaccurate sustainability assessments while weakening the impact of decisions made. Thus, it is imperative to move towards real-time data supported through Industry 4.0 technologies such as IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data analytics and digital twin for ARS. However, issues of static data and utilising real-time data for ARS have not been adequately explored in the existing literature. Therefore, this paper aims to critically examine the potential of moving from static to real-time data for ARS in the construction industry. This paper evaluates the usage of static data for sustainability assessments, associated issues, and the significance of adopting real-time data for ARS. Moreover, it also presents a conceptual framework for ARS using real-time data, challenges, and appropriate strategies to implement it and research gaps leading to future research directions. Collectively, this paper demonstrates the necessity and a pathway to move from static to real-time data for ARS while raising awareness among the research community.