Sustainable city

Sustainable city

Scientometric and Conceptual Network Analysis of Urban Resilience Knowledge Structure in Iran

Document Type : Article extracted From phd dissertation

Authors
Mohammadhosein Pourhasanzadeh
Ahmad Shahivandi
Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Art University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
10.22034/jsc.2025.492297.1819
Abstract
A B S T R A C T
Urban resilience, as one of the important concepts in urban studies, is significantly effective in strengthening the ability of cities to cope with crises and reduce their vulnerability. This field, which has widely attracted the attention of researchers, plays a fundamental role in forming sustainability policies and formulating effective strategies for managing urban crises. This research aims to analyze the conceptual network of urban resilience knowledge structure in Iran by examining the content of existing scientific articles and drawing a scientific map in this field. Based on the purpose, the research is of an applied type, and in terms of its nature, it is descriptive-analytical. The research's statistical population includes articles on urban resilience, which have been extracted from the Magiran database, considering the period "from the beginning to September 2024". This research used VOSviewer bibliometric software to process data and draw knowledge maps. The results show that the keywords resilience, earthquake, urban resilience, vulnerability, social resilience, physical resilience, and natural hazards are the most frequent concepts in urban resilience studies with the highest total link strength and the number of co-occurrences. Also, the results have shown that the keywords COVID-19, urban flood, urban tourism, and urban form have recently been of interest in urban resilience studies and are new concepts in this field.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
As the main centers of population and economic activity, cities are highly vulnerable to various natural and human threats. Threats such as rising sea levels, floods, storms, earthquakes, droughts, extreme events such as terrorist attacks, and financial crises have put significant pressure on cities and have increased the risks that cities face. With increasing pressure on cities, improving urban resilience has become a global consensus to achieve sustainable urban development. So, in the development policy discourse, there are calls for integrating urban resilience as a core component of urban planning and urban resilience as a fundamental component of global ambitions to improve the capacity of urban systems and structures and reduce disaster risk. The widespread and growing importance of urban resilience has made this concept a crucial paradigm for effectively managing urban challenges and issues, becoming a critical topic in urban studies in recent decades. Despite the importance of this concept and the numerous studies conducted in Iran, no comprehensive research has been conducted to analyze the conceptual structure of urban resilience knowledge in Iran. In this regard, the present study seeks to examine the structure of knowledge produced in the field of urban resilience in Iran using a scientometric approach and conceptual network analysis. This study aims to identify key concepts, their relationships, and research trends that have emerged in this field. By analyzing scientific networks and examining the trend of using concepts, we can better understand the current state of this knowledge and identify its strengths and weaknesses. The results of this study can help researchers and policymakers take effective steps to improve the state of urban resilience and increase the quality of research related to this field.
 
Methodology
The present study is of an applied type and is descriptive-analytical in nature. In this research, which was conducted with a scientometric approach, by applying bibliometric techniques and tools, lexical co-occurrence analysis of studies and research conducted in the field of urban resilience, we have drawn maps to visualize urban resilience knowledge in Iran and analyzed the conceptual network of the knowledge structure in this field. The statistical population of the research includes all articles extracted from the Magiran database. The emphasis of the research was on reviewing articles conducted in the field of "urban resilience," in other words, research that examined and studied the issue of resilience in an urban context and within the geographical scope of the city and urban areas. Therefore, by simultaneously searching for the two keywords "resilience" and "city" in the advanced search section of the Mag Iran website and specifying the period "from the beginning to September 2024", 759 articles were extracted, which were screened, and 474 articles were analyzed after removing irrelevant articles, including 285. Extracted articles and drawing knowledge maps were analyzed using VOSviewer bibliometric software.
 
Results and discussion
Scientometrics and conceptual network analysis of the knowledge structure of urban resilience in Iran have been drawn using three scientometric maps under network visualization, density visualization, and overlap visualization by applying a repetition order of 5 for each word and removing words unrelated to the topic. Co-occurrence analysis and relationships between keywords based on the network visualization map show that out of a total of 1032 keywords extracted from 474 articles examined, 33 keywords were repeated at least 5 times by the authors, and in total, the keywords were categorized into 7 clusters by the software. The first cluster has the most significant number of words and includes 9 keywords as social resilience, physical resilience, economic resilience, institutional resilience, social capital, earthquake risk, new urban habitations, environmental resilience, and scenario planning. In this cluster, the term "social resilience" comes first, with a total link strength of 47 and a co-occurrence frequency of 42. Co-occurrence analysis and relationships between keywords based on the density visualization map show that "resilience" is the central concept and the most densely populated point on the map. This indicates this concept's importance and key role in urban resilience studies. After that, the keywords "earthquake," "urban resilience," "vulnerability," and "social resilience" have the highest density, respectively. Co-occurrence analysis and relationships between keywords based on the overlap visualization map also indicate that keywords such as "COVID-19," "urban flood," "urban tourism," and "urban form" have been repeated more frequently in articles in recent years and represent emerging and new trends in the field of urban resilience that specifically address the effects of climate change, pandemics, environmental issues, and city structure and form.
 
Conclusion
The results show that the keyword "resilience," with the highest total link strength and number of co-occurrences as the central node, has extensive links with other related concepts. After that, the keywords "earthquake," "urban resilience," "vulnerability," "social resilience," "physical resilience," and "natural hazards" emerged as the densest concepts with the highest co-occurrence and link strength, indicating the important position of these concepts in scientific research on urban resilience in Iran. The results also showed that words such as "vulnerability," "earthquake," "natural disasters," "institutional resilience," and "crisis management" are older, and keywords such as "COVID-19", "urban flood," "urban tourism," and "urban form" are newer.
 
Funding
There is no funding support.
 
Authors’ Contribution
Authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of the article. All of the authors approved thecontent of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work declaration of competing interest none.
 
Conflict of Interest
Authors declared no conflict of interest.
 
Acknowledgments
 We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper.
Keywords
Scientometrics
Conceptual network
Urban resilience
Co-occurrence of words
Iran
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Sustainable city
Volume 8, Issue 2
Summer 2025
Pages 99-120