A Scientometric Review of Smart Construction Site in Construction Engineering and Management: Analysis and Visualization

Abstract

With the extensive development and application of information technologies in construction engineering and management (CEM), the construction site is experiencing a rapid digital revolution and transformation. Since smart construction site has become the current research trend and one of the most hot topics, thus this study adopted an integrated bibliometric approach and quantitative analysis to explore the global research on smart construction site. As it is indicated in the content, the bibliometric and scientometric method-based literature review was carried out in this study. To be specific, the co-citation analysis in terms of author, document, and journal; the collaboration analysis in terms of authorship, institutions, and country/region; and category analysis, as well as cluster analysis and burst analysis were conducted based on 2206 peer-reviewed academic papers, which were published from January 2000 to February 2021. It is found that there has been an explosion of relevant publications especially in the past 10 years along with the changing of keywords from flexibility approach to information technologies, 3D reconstruction, IoT technologies, virtual reality, and others. Moreover, the results indicated that the collaborations and cooperation among different institutions, countries, and authors are not close enough, and the most significant research and development in smart construction occurred primarily in the USA, China, and England. Additionally, the smart construction site’s relevant research in terms of publication of quantity was doubled every five years. In addition, the smart construction site relevant research has gradually changed from the traditional project performance associated indicators to smart simulation applications and scenes. Lastly, implementation and management-related concerns about smart construction sites are discussed with seven topics. This study provides researchers and practitioners not merely with an in-depth understanding of the characters and also the trend of smart construction site research in the construction engineering and management field.