New Development Direction of Underground Logistics from the Perspective of Public Transport: A Systematic Review Based on Scientometrics

Abstract

Research on the underground logistics system (ULS) has been carried out for nearly 30 years, but the description of the global research network, research trends, and the discussion of advanced theories and practices have not been systematically reviewed so far. The concept of public freight has expanded a new development direction: metro-based underground logistics system (M-ULS). The purpose of this paper is to analyze this new model by taking underground logistics and public freight as the research object. We performed statistical analyses of 222 references and constructed three kinds of visualized bibliographic information experiments for regional collaboration, authorship collaboration, and keywords co-occurrence. Based on the scientometrics results, the evolution path of the literature evolution was drawn. We used cluster-analysis-based taxonomy to structure the recent relevant literature. According to the comprehensive review, the research stays in the theoretical research stage, mainly focusing on system concept and planning, traffic organization, and network operation. There is still a lack of discussion on engineering quantification and application implementation. Finally, this study highlights some brief ideas, discussions, and potential suggestions for future research. This bibliometric research is expected to provide researchers and practitioners with a panoramic description and in-depth understanding of ULS and M-ULS research.