Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis of Civil Engineering Sustainability Research from 2015 to 2019

With the development of civil engineering sustainability, the scope of corresponding research covers a broader range. It is difficult for researchers to master the holistic situation of the study, leading to duplication and lag of their research. Therefore, this paper aims to present a state-of-the-art of the research of civil engineering sustainability by adopting two new methods (bibliometric and social network analysis) to review the literature of this field. It is concluded that the existing research takes engineering as the main subject to improve its sustainability through technologies. Current research mainly focuses on technological innovations and evaluations of environmental impacts in the fields of construction technology, energy consumption, material preparation, and design. The countries with the largest number of published articles are the United States and China. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the institution that has published more articles than others. Journal of Cleaner Production and Sustainability are the journals that have published the most articles. For the researchers, a professor of the University of Adelaide is the researcher who has published the most articles, and experts from South China University of Technology, Chongqing University, and University of Brighton are the main hubs among different researchers.