Smart retrofitting of buildings : a bibliometric study

Abstract

Smart Building (SB)s have gained significant attention over the past decade. This is mainly because of the performance and efficiency enhancements that smart features can enable a building system to achieve, for example, net-zero energy consumption, operational savings, state-of-the-science user-friendliness, safety and security. Nowadays, many new buildings are being designed with smart features. The ‘grand challenge’, however, is converting the existing, ordinary buildings into SBs, through a process called “smart retrofitting (SR)”. This process, while affecting the existing building components and the end-users, is challenging to the relevant facilities managers. As strengthening the SR knowledge base will enable better-informed, hence more effective decisions, the focus of this research is to undertake a bibliometric analysis of SR research to assess its development in terms of prominent authors, countries and organisations. The bibliometric searches were conducted on the ‘Scopus’ and ‘Web of Science' databases. A total of 107 journal articles were identified and analysed using the “VOSviewer” software. The findings revealed: the co-authorship patterns; the connections among the most influential authors, countries, and organisations; and the weak collaboration among the authors and organisations. This study is the first bibliometric analysis on SR, the results of which not only serve as a useful reference for both researchers and practitioners but also signpost further works to be undertaken for complementing the current results.