The Issue of Land Subsidence in Coastal and Alluvial Plains: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

Land subsidence (LS) is becoming one of the major problems in coastal and delta cities worldwide. Understanding the current LS situation and the research trends is of paramount importance for further studies and addressing future international research networks. We analyzed the LS-related literature available from the Scopus database. The use of a single database avoided the redundancy of articles, while excluding some subject areas was useful to obtain only studies related to LS. By using VOSviewer and CiteSpace tools, we conducted a bibliometric analysis by considering title, keywords, and abstract to identify the temporal development, the geographical origin, and the area of study of the research. The results revealed a considerable heterogeneity of approaches, thematics, study areas, and research output trends. China, the US, and Italy are the major contributors to the scientific production, but the higher number of articles is not always related to the extension of the LS phenomenon in these countries. The monitoring approach differs worldwide, and univocal modeling is still lacking; from the analysis of the keywords, it is clear that the focus of most studies is on the relationship with the hydrological/hydrogeological aspects. Since the 2000s, however, the development of SAR technologies has boosted the study of the phenomenon from a different point of view.