A bibliometric review of the status and emerging research trends in construction safety management technologies

Abstract Technologies such as virtual reality (VR), online databases, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Building Information Modelling (BIM), Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), 4 D Computer-Aided Design (4 D CAD), wearable robotics have been adopted to improve construction site health and safety. However, little attempt has been made to map global research on construction health and safety technologies. Therefore, this paper conducts a review of technologies for construction health and safety management to reveal emerging research trends. A bibliometric review adopting a two-step literature selection method was conducted to compile relevant publications from the Scopus database. In total, 240 related papers were examined. VOSviewer was used to develop a co-occurrence network based on the bibliographic data obtained. The analysis focussed on co-authorship per country, country/region distribution, the number of publications annually, publication source and source and trend of research topics. Findings revealed that emerging trends in construction health and safety technologies research focussed on project health and safety design and planning, visualisation and image processing for construction projects, digital technologies for project monitoring, information management and Internet of Things, automation and robotic systems, health and safety and accident prevention and structure evaluation.