Long-term Trends in Construction Engineering and Management Research in Korea

This bibliographic study presents a historical perspective on Korea's construction engineering and management (CEM) research and reports a 27-year analysis of papers written by Korean CEM researchers between 1993 and 2019. Frequency analysis of the collected papers was performed according to three main perspectives: the knowledge area, research topics, and methods. Knowledge area analysis shows that research fields have become more diversified and subdivided. Construction technology, cost management, and planning and schedule management have consistently maintained the top three positions for the past three decades. In addition, quality management, resource management, and risk management were also ranked high in the 2000s. In the 2010s, safety management, environmental management, quality management, and construction industry and business were ranked high. These changes reveal how Korean society's and industry's demands have changed over the years. Furthermore, the findings from keyword frequency analysis revealed that the focus of CEM research was mostly on cost and scheduling in the 1990s and on scheduling, risk, cost, and construction automation in the 2000s. The advent of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the 2010s was an epochal change. This study found that the research methods frequently used by CEM researchers were simulation, optimization, regression analysis, computer vision and image processing, 3D modeling, case-based reasoning, genetic algorithm, case study, economic analysis, and artificial neural network.