Abstract
This article presents a bibliometric analysis and mapping of the Chinese process safety research, focusing on the contributions made in core process safety journals and on the influences of international collaborations and knowledge sources on the developments of this research domain. Collaboration networks, term co-occurrence networks, and co-citation network were analyzed to identify trends, patterns, and the knowledge distribution of the Chinese research on process safety. Work to data has been clustered mainly on safety of chemical processes, fire and explosion, and risk management and accidents. Chinese research contributions are concentrated in only few journals, while the corresponding intellectual base draws on the wider literature focused on understanding and modeling phenomena, and on the broader risk research literature, although to a lesser extent. While various foreign authors are highly cited by Chinese authors, only very few direct collaborations with international scholars are identified. The results are used as a basis for a discussion on future research directions and developments for the community. Increased focus on uncertainty treatment and handling of black swan events, risk evaluation and economic aspects of safety decisions, interorganizational risk management, road and maritime transport of hazardous substances, risk perception and communication, and integrated safety and security assessment, are highlighted as fruitful directions for future scholarship. It is hoped that the insights obtained from this work can facilitate new and consolidated collaborations, as well as further invigorate the Chinese process safety domain, ultimately contributing to improved safety performance of process industries in China and elsewhere.
Highlights
Process industries are an important sector in the global economic landscape and provide the backbone for economic and social develop ment in many areas where industrial facilities are located
A bibliometric mapping analysis is performed of the Chinese international process safety literature, focusing on the contri butions in three core process safety journals
The results of the collaboration analyses indicate that while Chinese researchers and institutions have collaborated with many international scholars located mostly in western Europe, northeastern USA, southern Australia, and Japan, by far most of the collaborations occur within China
Summary
Process industries are an important sector in the global economic landscape and provide the backbone for economic and social develop ment in many areas where industrial facilities are located. Process plants are hazardous facilities, which can lead to significant negative safety and environmental impacts and are of high societal concern. Due to the above-mentioned safety and environmental concerns, process safety has gained increasing attention in Chinese industrial, government, and academic contexts. This has led to a steady improvement in safety performance of the Chinese chemical industries (Zhao et al, 2014). Various authors have performed research focusing on these and other accidents (Chen and Wang, 2012; Chen et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2019; Zhao, 2014), indicating that scientific research is important for improving process safety in China
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