Beyond Composting Basics: A Sustainable Development Goals—Oriented Strategic Guidance to IoT Integration for Composting in Modern Urban Ecosystems

IoT-based composting provides clear advantages over conventional urban composting in areas such as enhanced monitoring, efficiency, resource utilization, and management. Bibliometric analysis of 121 publications on IoT-based urban composting identified critical research gaps and emphasizes the necessity for a strategic framework for full implementation and execution of sustainable development goals-oriented IoT-based composting in modern cities across. Under the key theme of IoT-based urbanized composting automation, 16.5% of publications focus on urbanized composting automation but overlook the system’s scalability. The lowest mean citations of 72.7 (22.3% of publications) in intelligent composting process optimization show the lack of broader applications. A total of 28.9% of total publications focus on urban composting sustainability assessment but lack IoT integration in their scope. The composting process, pollution, environmental impact, cost, and life cycle analysis of modern city composting share 19% and 13.3%, respectively. However, both key themes lack real-time monitoring, operation, and economic feasibility for scalable models. The article highlights a fragmented landscape providing sustainable development goals-oriented strategic guidance for the full implementation and execution of IoT-based composting facilities in modern city ecosystems. The article comprehensively explains the budgetary constraints, scalability, data management, technological compatibility, privacy, security, and regulatory compliance essential for sustainable operation.