Research Trends in Pavement Management during the First Years of the 21st Century: A Bibliometric Analysis during the 2000–2013 Period

Abstract

A bibliometric analysis based on Scopus database was carried out to identify the global research trends related to pavement management area from 2000 to 2013, and to improve the understanding of the research topics in that period. The results reveal two stable periods of annual publications, from 2000 to 2002 with an average rate of 27, and from 2003 to 2010 with a value of 51; and a period with an increasing production rate of 20 publications per year after 2010. According to the document-type distribution, articles and conference papers have almost the same contribution. The most productive country was the United States, followed by Canada and China. The research trend in the field of pavement management could be grouped into three main areas. The first one is related to pavement management systems, which attracted the greatest attention, especially optimization processes with various objectives and lifecycle cost analysis. The second group is about pavement performance modeling, where calibration of mechanical empirical models was largely developed. Lastly, data collection had also occupied several papers, mainly about cracking classification. Sustainability aspects in pavement management became an emergent issue. The trending issues in that period, in these categories, were summarized in the paper.