Abstract
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), like many other regions in the world, are areas that are prone to hydrometeorological disasters, which threaten livelihoods and cause economic losses. To derive LAC’s status in the field of flood risk-related research, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the region’s publication record using the Web of Science journal database (WoS). After analysing a total of 1887 references according to inclusion-exclusion criteria, 302 articles published in the last 20 years were selected. The research articles published in the period 2000–2020 revealed that Mexico, Brazil, and certain South American countries such as Chile, Peru, and Argentina are more productive in flood risk research. Scientific research is increasing, and most of the available studies focus on lowland areas. The frequently-used keywords are generic, and there is often verbatim copying from the title of the article, which shows the poor coherence between the title, abstract, and keywords. This limited diversification of keywords is of little use in bibliometric studies, reducing their visibility and negatively impacting the citation count level. LAC flood studies are mainly related to hydrometeorological assessments, flood risk analyses, geomorphological and ecosystem studies, flood vulnerability and resilience approaches, and statistical and geographic information science evaluations. This systematic review reveals that although flood risk research has been important in the last two decades, future research linked with future climatic scenarios is key to the development of realistic solutions to disaster risks.
Highlights
Accepted: 20 December 2021Floods are the response of river basins to heavy rainstorms normally accompanied by a range of devastations, with economic, social, ecological, and environmental impact
It is expected that flood consequences in Latin America and the Caribbean will be more intense due to the exponential, unregulated urbanization of the floodplains, catchment degradation caused by anthropogenic activity, lack of preparedness and resilience for emergency response, the persistence of poverty, inefficient public policies, and infrastructural problems [6]
The analysis revealed that 21 Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries feature at least one peer-reviewed publication in English, implying that the remaincountries featuredid at not least one peer-reviewed publication
Summary
Accepted: 20 December 2021Floods (pluvial, fluvial, or coastal) are the response of river basins to heavy rainstorms normally accompanied by a range of devastations, with economic, social, ecological, and environmental impact. Flood damage worldwide has increased considerably in recent decades, mainly due to the steady growth of populations and economic activities in floodprone areas [1]. These extreme events affect the local population and the land’s infrastructure and its geomorphology. It is expected that flood consequences in Latin America and the Caribbean (hereafter named LAC) will be more intense due to the exponential, unregulated urbanization of the floodplains, catchment degradation caused by anthropogenic activity, lack of preparedness and resilience for emergency response, the persistence of poverty, inefficient public policies, and infrastructural problems [6]. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) induces strong arid conditions in the northeast of South America and the north of Brazil, promoting the Published: 22 December 2021
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