Mining safety research in China: Understanding safety research trends and future demands for sustainable mining industry

Mining safety is considered to be a significant factor in ensuring the sustainability of mining industry. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the current status and development trend of mining safety research in China, this study proposes a three-step approach, including literature extraction and screening, bibliometric analysis, and discussion. Concentrating on the extracted 1814 articles from the Web of Science Core Collection over the years 1984-2021, this paper uses VOSviewer to analyze the influential authors/institutions, domestic and in-ternational collaborations, keywords, citations, funding agency, etc. The results point to a consistent increase in mining safety research in recent years, with dominant research topics including gas hazards, rockburst, water inrush, and thermodynamic disasters. Besides, the limitations of mining safety research are pointed out, such as the quantification of accident mechanisms, real-time monitoring and accurate forecasting of disasters, multi-hazard coupling mechanisms. Based on these findings, future research directions are proposed, including the construction of intelligent mines, the establishment of safety information mines, the quantitative analysis of the deep mining accidents mechanism.