Global Research Productions Pertaining to Design for Safety: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on WoS Database

Design for Safety (DFS) is a crucial tool that assists humans in paying closer attention to safety and health in project life cycles of buildings and other facilities. Analyzing DFS through a bibliometric perspective can facilitate the development of new theories, promote disciplinary content, and reveal the direction of development in the subject area. This paper presents a systematic, holistic, and comprehensive overview of the global literature focused on DFS, summarizing the number of publications, research hotspots, research methods, and distribution. Scientific publications are a measure of academic level and scientific strength of institutions and individuals, and this article provides an overview of interdisciplinary research on DFS from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2020, based on literature related to DFS in the Web of Science database (WoS-database). The paper highlights current research hotspots, ideas, and trends around the world, offering a global overview of contemporary and interdisciplinary research in DFS. By utilizing both keyword clustering and co-citation clustering techniques, the paper proposes the 4P framework (i.e., purpose, people, procedures, and phenomena) to better understand current global achievements and to achieve a complex structure for future development. This concise description of DFS trends may provide a logical mechanism for assessing and understanding the development of DFS research.