Abstract:

To reveal the development process and future trends in building fire research, a systematic analysis of the knowledge map for building fire studies was conducted. Based on the literature in the field of building fires indexed from the web of science (WOS) and China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) databases from 1992 to 2025, by employing the bibliometric tool Citespace, the hotspots and knowledge graph of building fire research were systematically investigated from the temporal evolution, the institutional collaboration, the keyword co-occurrence and emergence, and so on, and its evolutionary process was revealed. Research findings indicate that the volume of publications related to building fires has grown rapidly since 2005, literature output exhibits a pronounced Matthew effect and the characteristics of national leadership and regional distinctiveness, with China and the United States being the primary contributors, followed by European and East Asian countries. Regarding building fires, foreign literature research primarily focuses on fire dynamics simulation, intelligent evacuation systems, and green fireproof materials, while Chinese literature emphasizes high-rise buildings, building information modeling (BIM) technology integration, and fire risk assessment, cross-national and cross-institutional collaboration remains relatively loose. Current research on building fires exhibits interdisciplinary and cross-domain characteristics, showing a trend toward transitioning from empirical judgment to data-driven approaches and from single-disaster response to multi-disaster coupled response. However, the application of intelligent technologies, multi-scale risk assessment, and prevention and control systems still require further development.

Key words: knowledge map, building fire, bibliometric, research hotspot, map analysis