A systematic review of current status and trends of mega-infrastructure projects

Abstract

With the rapid development of the global economy, mega-infrastructure projects (IMPs) have developed vigorously. Compared with infrastructure, IMPs have attracted more and more attention. In the management of IMPs, an impressive number of studies have been published over the past decades. However, the researches and trends of IMPs research remain vague without a systematic review and analysis. In this study, the number of annual publications, contributions of institutions, co-occurrence of keywords and research interest were analyzed by bibliometric analysis. The result shows that, the US, China, Australia, the UK and Canada have significant advantages in IMPs research. Major topics in IMPs include stakeholders, life-cycle management, innovation development and social responsibility. Moreover the characteristic “cross-regional”, operation and maintenance management and management mode are lacking, which will be the focus during the future research. This state-of-the-art review helps to recognizing the research gaps in related fields and provide directions for future research.

Keywords

• Mega-infrastructure projects
• Literature review
• Scientometric analysis
• VOSviewer
• Current status