Human-earth system science, as a foundation of sustainable development research, can help decision-makers design sustainable pathways through multidimensional perspectives, integrated concepts, and systematic thinking. It plays an increasingly important role in the construction of national economies, societies, and ecological civilizations. Human-earth system sustainable development assessment models and scenario analysis techniques have become important tools that are widely used and studied. However, current research lacks a summary of the progress and limitations of these models and scenario analysis techniques. To keep pace with international developments and promote the understanding and advancement of human-earth system modeling and decision analysis of Chinese scholars, it is necessary to review the current international research in this field systematically. By combining literature analysis and quantitative analysis, this study summarizes the difficulty of models in simultaneously supporting multiple sustainable development goals and the challenges in simulating the social dimension. We also analyze the challenges in capturing systematic change, scale conversion, interdisciplinary knowledge integration, uncertainty management, data mining, and the use of new technologies. Additionally, we summarize the methods for setting up scenarios, the general types of scenarios, the content of scenarios, the limitations in addressing internal scenario conflict cross-scale linkages, and connections with decision-making. This study provides an important reference for promoting innovative development among Chinese scholars in this field.