A quantitative analysis of research trends in flood hazard assessment

Studies focusing on flood hazard assessment (FHA) reviews are still rare and usually approach mapping, uncertainty, spatial scale, and economic loss. Nevertheless, most of these studies only provide a snapshot of the current development of FHA, showing a partial view, and focusing on a limited number of selected approaches and methods. This study aims to analyze the historical development and emerging fields of FHA-related research and applies a bibliometric analysis method based on the Bibliometrix tool and the Web of Science (WoS) database. We refined the 4135 articles retrieved, established a dataset containing 723 articles, and downloaded the information of all articles, including journal, author, country, keywords, and abstracts. The dataset is entered bibliometric analysis model to study the development of FHA-related research from 2000 to 2020 (data as of 15 February 2021). The results show that the number of articles on FHA-related research has continued to increase and developed rapidly. The top five countries in the number of studies are China, Italy, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Compared to developed countries, the FHA-related research in developing countries lags significantly behind although it is developing rapidly. Future research is likely to focus on global change, coastal floods, compound disaster, and psycho-social aspects of flooding. Moreover, research using remote sensing and machine learning is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The purpose of this research is to provide direction for future FHA-related research and provide reference and scientific guidance for FHA-related researchers.

Automated summary

This study analyzed the historical development and emerging fields of flood hazard assessment (FHA)-related research using bibliometric analysis. The results showed that the number of articles on FHA-related research has been increasing rapidly. The study also found that FHA-related research in developing countries lags behind developed countries but is advancing. Future research may focus on global change, coastal floods, compound disasters, and psycho-social aspects of flooding. Remote sensing and machine learning are also being increasingly used in this research field.