Towards smarter concrete construction: A systematic review of monitoring technologies and sensing methods

Abstract

Monitoring the concrete construction process is essential for ensuring safety, quality, and efficiency during construction activities. While numerous sensing and monitoring techniques have been applied to individual stages such as pouring, vibration, setting, and crack development, existing studies largely address these stages in isolation, lacking an integrated perspective across the concrete construction process. This study presents a systematic literature review, conducted under PRISMA 2020 guidelines, synthesizing 140 journal articles retrieved from the Scopus database. The review systematically compares a wide range of sensing and monitoring technologies, including fiber optic sensors, piezoelectric-based methods, radio frequency identification (RFID), computer vision, acoustic emission, and Internet of Things (IoT) systems. These technologies are evaluated in terms of their application characteristics, advantages, limitations, and field suitability across three critical stages of concrete construction: (1) concrete construction support systems, (2) concrete before hardening, and (3) concrete post-hardening. Based on the systematic comparison results, three critical research gaps are identified: (1) cross-phase fragmentation and the absence of integrated process-chain monitoring across concrete construction stages, (2) limited interoperability and scalability of existing digital sensing ecosystems, and (3) insufficient robustness, energy autonomy, and calibration stability of sensors deployed under real construction-site conditions. Future research should focus on developing cross-phase, process-chain monitoring architectures, interoperable and scalable digital sensing ecosystems, and robust, energy-autonomous, and self-calibrating sensor systems to enable reliable, process-oriented, and predictive monitoring throughout the concrete construction process. This study is the first to systematically synthesize concrete construction monitoring and sensing technologies across different construction stages, providing a phase-dependent roadmap for integrated and process-oriented monitoring.