Visualization and Analysis of Mapping Knowledge Domain of Heterogeneous Traffic Flow

Mapping knowledge domain (MKD) is an important application in bibliometrics, which is a method of visually presenting and explaining newly developed interdisciplinary scientific fields using data mining, information analysis, scientific measurement, and graphic rendering. This study combines applied mathematics, visual analysis technology, information science, and scientometrics to systematically analyze the development status, research distribution, and future trend of the heterogeneous traffic flow by using the MKD software tools VOSviewer and CiteSpace. Based on the MKD and Bibliometrics approaches, 4709 articles have been studied, which were published by Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) from 2004 to 2021 in the field of heterogeneous traffic flows. Firstly, this paper presents the annual numbers of articles, origin countries, main research organizations, and groups as well as the source journals on heterogeneous traffic flow studies. Then, cocitation analysis is used to divide heterogeneous traffic flow into three main research directions, which include “heterogeneous traffic flow model,” “traffic flow capacity analysis,” and “traffic flow stability analysis.” The keyword cooccurrence analysis is applied to identify five dominant clusters: “modeling and optimization methods,” “traffic flow characteristics analysis,” “driving behavior analysis,” “simulation experiment,” and “policies and barriers.” Finally, burst keywords were studied according to the publication date to present more clearly the change of research focus and direction over time.