Assessing trends in wildland-urban interface fire research through text mining: a comprehensive analysis of published literature

Abstract

Research on fires at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) has generated significant insights and advancements across various fields of study. Environmental, agriculture, and social sciences have played prominent roles in understanding the impacts of fires in the environment, in protecting communities, and addressing management challenges. This study aimed to create a database using a text mining technique for global researchers interested in WUI-projects and highlighting the interest of countries in this field. Author’s-Keywords analysis emphasized the dominance of fire science-related terms, especially related to WUI, and identified keyword clusters related to the WUI fire-risk-assessment-system—“exposure”, “danger”, and “vulnerability” within wildfire research. Trends over the past decade showcase shifting research interests with a growing focus on WUI fires, while regional variations highlighted that the “exposure” keyword cluster received greater attention in the southern Europe and South America. However, vulnerability keywords have relatively a lower representation across all regions. The analysis underscores the interdisciplinary nature of WUI research and emphasizes the need for targeted approaches to address the unique challenges of the wildland-urban interface. Overall, this study provides valuable insights for researchers and serves as a foundation for further collaboration in this field through the understanding of the trends over recent years and in different regions.