Exploring global technogenic earthquakes from a scientometric prospective: research trends, semantic analysis, and research drivers

This article focuses on the analysis of academic literature on technogenic seismicity from a bibliometric perspective. Specifically, it examines the period from 1980 to 2022, inclusive. Over 10,000 scientific documents on this topic were sourced from the SCOPUS database. These documents were analyzed using VOSviewer software to evaluate the most productive journals, books, articles and their keyword co-occurrences, as well as to identify co-authorship among the most prolific countries. Ordinary Least Square Regression was then employed to establish a relationship between scientific production and its driving factors. Based on the results, three main subject areas were identified: (1) case studies on the primary causes of induced seismicity; (2) in-depth knowledge of man-made seismicity from geological and geophysical perspectives; and (3) numerical modeling of induced seismicity. A high correlation was found between the number of published documents and the key driving factors of induced seismicity. As a novel study using bibliometric analysis methods in the field of technogenic and induced seismicity, this research provides a reliable scientific tool for quickly identifying major research areas, current research boundaries, and general knowledge on the topic of interest. Bibliometric analysis can be used by scientists and researchers involved in the study of man-made seismicity to better understand the current intellectual structure, analyze scientific progress, and detect future research directions in this field.