Exploring the Emerging Evolution Trends of Urban Resilience Research by Scientometric Analysis

Numerous studies in urban resilience have been published in the past decade. However, only a few publications have tracked the evolution trends of urban resilience research, the findings of which can serve as a useful guide for scholars to foresee worth-effort research areas and make the best use of precious time and resources. In order to fill the research gap, this study performed a scientometric analysis on the evolution trends of urban resilience research using a versatile software package-CiteSpace. The scientomentric analysis focuses on distribution of lead authors and their institutions, high frequency categories and keywords, high influential journals, author contribution, and evolutionary trends based on co-author analysis, co-word analysis, co-citation analysis and cluster analysis of documents. This study discoveries that first, the U.S., England, Australia, Canada, China and Sweden are the countries that make the most significant contributions in the advancement of urban resilience research; second, the existing urban resilience research focuses primarily on environmental studies, geography and planning development; third, hot topics of the urban resilience research keep shifting from 1993 to 2016; fourth, the knowledge body of urban resilience research consists of five clusters: resilience exploratory analysis, disaster resilience, urban resilience, urban resilience practice, and social-ecological systems; last, the emerging trends in urban resilience research include defining urban resilience, adaptation model, case studies, analytical methods and urban social-ecological systems, resulting in cutting-edge research areas in urban resilience.