A comprehensive review on green buildings research: bibliometric analysis during 1998-2018

Abstract

Buildings account for nearly 2/5ths of global energy expenditure. Due to this figure, the 90s witnessed the rise of green buildings (GBs) that were designed with the purpose of lowering the demand for energy, water, and materials resources while enhancing environmental protection efforts and human well-being over time. This paper examines recent studies and technologies related to the design, construction, and overall operation of GBs and determines potential future research directions in this area of study. This global review of green building development in the last two decades is conducted through bibliometric analysis on the Web of Science, via the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Publication performance, countries' characteristics, and identification of key areas of green building development and popular technologies were conducted via social network analysis, big data method, and S-curve predictions. A total of 5246 articles were evaluated on the basis of subject categories, journals' performance, general publication outputs, and other publication characteristics. Further analysis was made on dominant issues through keyword co-occurrence, green building technologies by patent analysis, and S-curve predictions. The USA, China, and the UK are ranked the top three countries where the majority of publications come from. Australia and China had the closest relationship in the global network cooperation. Global trends of the top 5 countries showed different country characteristics. China had a steady and consistent growth in green building publications each year. The total publications on different cities had a high correlation with cities' GDP by Baidu Search Index. Also, barriers and contradictions such as cost, occupant comfort, and energy consumption were discussed in developed and developing countries. Green buildings, sustainability, and energy efficiency were the top three hotspots identified through the whole research period by the cluster analysis. Additionally, green building energy technologies, including building structures, materials, and energy systems, were the most prevalent technologies of interest determined by the Derwent Innovations Index prediction analysis. This review reveals hotspots and emerging trends in green building research and development and suggests routes for future research. Bibliometric analysis, combined with other useful tools, can quantitatively measure research activities from the past and present, thus bridging the historical gap and predicting the future of green building development.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Big data; Cite space; Energy efficiency; Green buildings; Patent analysis; S-curve.

Fig. 1

Analytical procedure of the article

Fig. 2

The performance of top10 most productive journals

Fig. 3

The number of articles published yearly, between 1998 and 2018

Fig. 4

Analysis procedure of countries’ characteristics

Fig. 5

Global geographical distribution of the top 20 publications based on authors’ locations

Fig. 6

The top 10 most productive countries had close academic collaborative relationships

Fig 7.

The publication trends of the top five countriesbetween 1998 and 2018 countries areshown in Fig 7.

Fig. 8

Baidu Search Index of green building in China 2013–2018 from high to low

Fig. 9

TP GDP & Search Index were highly related

Fig. 10

Analysis procedure of dominant issues

Fig. 11

Co-word analysis from 1998–2007

Fig. 12

Co-word analysis from 2008–2015

Fig. 13

Co-word analysis from 2016–2018

Fig. 14

The S-curves of different Structure types from patents

Fig. 15

The S-curves of a different material from patents

Fig. 16

The S-curves of energy systems from patents