The Smart Buildings Revolution: A Comprehensive Review of the Smart Readiness Indicator Literature

The construction industry is embracing advanced digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things and automation systems, to enhance energy management and occupant comfort in smart buildings. Recognizing the need to assess the readiness of buildings to support energy-efficient and adaptive functionalities, the European Commission introduced the smart readiness indicator (SRI) in 2018. While the SRI provides a standardized framework, its adoption, limitations, and potential to drive the evolution of smart buildings remain underexplored. This study addresses these gaps through a systematic literature review, incorporating bibliometric and qualitative analyses to evaluate the state of research on the SRI. The bibliometric analysis reveals that research on smart readiness is growing rapidly, with a strong focus on energy efficiency and smart buildings. This literature primarily evaluates and promotes the adoption of the SRI within buildings, aligning with the need to explore the paths for the evolution of smart buildings. The qualitative review summarizes six understudied research topic required to drive the evolution of smart buildings in the literature: The applicability of the SRI to different contexts, including various building types and climatic conditions; the subjectivity in the framework; the alignment with other certificates and standards; the SRI as a tool for smart retrofit; expansion to the neighborhood and district levels; and the score correlation with energy performance. The findings show that, although the SRI was originally introduced for buildings, it has much wider applicability, at the more detailed building component level as well as at the broader neighborhood and district levels. Future research could focus on the role of the SRI in evaluating smart readiness at the neighborhood scale and determining the minimum acceptable SRI score.