A bibliometric and thematic analysis of blast-resilient design research in the built environment

Abstract

Explosive incidents, whether accidental or intentional, pose significant threats to buildings, critical infrastructure, and urban environments. Understanding the evolution of blast-resilient design research is therefore essential to developing safer, more resilient built environments. This study presents a bibliometric and thematic analysis of blast-resilient design research, based on 1982 publications indexed in the Scopus database between 2000 and 2026. Bibliometric analyses were conducted in VOSviewer to examine publication trends, leading journals, country collaboration networks, subject-area distributions, keyword co-occurrence, and co-citation relationships, complemented by a thematic interpretation of the identified research domains. The results reveal a substantial increase in publication activity, particularly after 2015, reflecting the growing importance of blast resilience in structural safety research. The findings further demonstrate that the field remains predominantly engineering-oriented, with comparatively limited contributions from architecture and urban planning. Overlay visualisation indicates a shift in focus from conventional topics such as reinforced-concrete behaviour and progressive collapse towards numerical simulation, optimisation, machine learning, and advanced protective materials. Overall, the study identifies significant disciplinary fragmentation while highlighting emerging opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. By integrating bibliometric mapping with thematic analysis, this research provides a comprehensive overview of the current knowledge structure and offers an evidence-based foundation for future interdisciplinary research and blast-resilient design practices.