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Review
. 2022 Sep 27;19(19):12287.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph191912287.

A Review of COVID-19-Related Literature on Freight Transport: Impacts, Mitigation Strategies, Recovery Measures, and Future Research Directions

Ahmed Karam  1   2 , Abdelrahman E E Eltoukhy  3 , Ibrahim Abdelfadeel Shaban  4 , El-Awady Attia  5
Affiliations
Review

A Review of COVID-19-Related Literature on Freight Transport: Impacts, Mitigation Strategies, Recovery Measures, and Future Research Directions

Ahmed Karam et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruptions in the freight transport sector. The number of studies on the impact of COVID-19 on freight transport and possible mitigation strategies are growing. However, a systematic and comprehensive review highlighting the research themes, main findings, research methods, and future research directions of these studies remains scarce. Therefore, this study presents a mixed review comprising scientometric and systematic reviews to cover these research gaps. Results show that 68 studies have been published on this topic since the beginning of 2020 and that they cover three main themes: the impacts of COVID-19 on freight transport, mitigation strategies, and recovery during and after COVID-19. In addition, we describe the research methods, main findings, and possible research directions in each of them. Thus, the findings of our work present both theoretical and practical analyses of COVID-19-related research on freight transport and provide important future research directions in this domain.

Keywords: COVID-19; air freight; freight transport; recovery measures; road transport; sea shipping; strategies.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Summary of the review methodology.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Keywords combination through Boolean logic gates.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Schematic diagram illustrating the 3-D matrix research themes, including impact, mitigation, and recoverability.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Keyword mapping network.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Density visualization of the co-authorship between countries based on (a) total published documents, and (b) number of citations.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Research gaps and future directions matrix.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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