Environmental monitoring systems have been evolving dynamically to embrace modern Internet of Things (IoT) technology in the last decade. Despite this progress there are, however, continuing limitations and issues with some IoT designs. Thus, past research has identified areas of concern in areas such as communications, interoperability, reliability, and scalability. As enabling technologies evolve in an accelerated manner, there will no doubt be a plethora of environmental monitoring solutions under development. Such solutions need to be well evaluated so that potential users are knowledgeable in relation to the best solution for their specific applications. Along these lines, this paper puts forward a framework to evaluate proposed IT designs relevant to smart environmental monitoring systems. This framework is based on model standardized software engineering requirements found in ISO 25010, which it uses as an aid to develop business-driven ‘smart’ environmental monitoring systems.