Science Mapping of Tunnel Fires: A Scientometric Analysis-Based Study

The topic of tunnel fire attracted considerable attention in past two decades. The popularity of this topic is mainly attributed to the widespread construction of long-span tunnels and their incident fire safety issues, as well as the frequent occurrence of catastrophic tunnel fires. To date, a number of research papers have been published focusing on specific aspects of tunnel fires such as fire dynamics, smoke extraction, fire suppression system, personnel evacuation, fire risk evaluation, and some others with broader areas of focus. In this work, a thorough bibliometric and network analysis is conducted on the basis of peer-reviewed publications on tunnel fires, seeking to provide insights in this topic. A total of 519 research articles are obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection database. It is identified that the most prolific journal is Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, with 121 papers, accounting for 23.3% of the total. England is the most influential region with the highest citations per document, while China is the most prolific country with nearly a half of the total, where the University of Science and Technology of China is the primary contributor. The visualization and cluster analysis of research topics indicate that the currently bursting topics mainly concentrate on the smoke thermodynamics and smoke extraction based on model-scale tests. The reference analysis and co-citation network also confirm the findings.