A bibliometric visual analysis of the system dynamics approach for construction and demolition waste management

Continuously increasing amounts of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) is a critical problem globally. As a quantitative modeling approach to solve complex problems, system dynamics (SD) is frequently adopted to help understand the dynamic interrelationship of contributing variables of C&DW management and predict future behavior for both short and long-term decision making. However, there has been no systematic review of such SD applications to C&DW management. The aim of this study is therefore to provide a systematic review of current applications of SD modeling to C&DW management in order to identify research gaps and provide future related research opportunities. The novelty of this paper is that it is the first time that bibliometric visual analysis has been adopted to interpret visualized network maps of the co-occurrence of countries, keywords, and citations of selected articles on the application of SD modeling in C&DW management. The SD modeling applications of these articles are comprehensively reviewed from the two main C&D waste management perspective of the 3R principle and sustainability. The results reveal that more research effort has been made to reduce and recycle C& DW than to reuse it, and that the economic and environmental performance of C&DW attracts more attention than its social performance. The study suggests that to deepen and broaden the analysis of C&DW management, future research could use hybrid models by combining SD with emerging techniques and tools, such as building information modeling, geographic information systems, and blockchain technology.