Digital technology enabled circularity in the construction industry: a bibliometric study

Abstract

The construction industry has a crucial role in a country’s development process, nevertheless, it has a significant impact as it contributes to the emission of harmful gases, waste generation, and energy and resource consumption, making it one of the major contributors to environmental issues. By adopting Circular Economy (CE) principles, the construction industry can reduce costs, mitigate negative environmental impacts, address inherent complexities, and increase the resilience of urban areas to create more liveable, productive, and convenient cities. Utilising Digital Technologies (DT) is crucial in achieving circularity in construction. By identifying a knowledge gap in DT-enabled circularity, this research is aimed at exploring current research on DT-enabled circularity in the construction industry. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to address this aim and identify prominent authors, countries, and key research studies (co-occurrences of keywords). Around 66 documents published in Scopus were collected and analysed using “VOSviewer” software. The analysis revealed that a limited number of studies have been carried out in the selected research area. The results reported in the paper not only serve as a useful reference for both researchers and practitioners, but also signpost further works to be undertaken.