Three decades of disaster risk reduction education: A bibliometric study

Abstract

It has been more than three decades of disaster risk reduction education in the United Nations; however, no study has been conducted to explore its current intellectual landscape. That being so, the present study aimed to determine the existing research trends and gaps in disaster risk reduction education, including opportunities and challenges. The paper reports bibliometric research on disaster risk reduction education using publications extracted from the Scopus database. With 452 publications so far (as of writing), results revealed that although the trends in the number of publications per year are generally increasing, there is a considerably limited number of scholars, institutions, and countries that are involved in disaster risk reduction education research; not to mention its limited diversity. This may be because disaster risk reduction is an emerging field. Nevertheless, it may be necessary to invest in building the capacity and encouraging more scholars and institutions to conduct research along with various aspects/phases of disaster risk reduction, involving different stakeholders and vulnerable groups of people, using a variety of research designs in needs assessment and evaluation studies, as well as the assessment on the effectiveness of related strategies. The study contributes to the discourse on disaster risk reduction, specifically disaster risk reduction education. It attempted to establish the current disaster risk reduction education research landscape that led to determining existing trends and gaps. Consequently, findings informed the reflection on opportunities and challenges in disaster risk reduction education research.