How COVID-19 transformed the landscape of transportation research: an integrative scoping review and roadmap for future research
Review article, 2024
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars mobilized their efforts to address its far-reaching societal problems. With mobility restrictions being front and center of the pandemic, a new cohort of transportation science was developed within a short period of time. Here, we examine more than 400 studies related to COVID-19 published across transportation journals during 2020 and 2021. The aim is (i) to scope this newly developed segment of transportation research, (ii) outline the diversity of pandemic-related issues across various divisions of the transportation field and (iii) provide a roadmap for the future of this line of research. Common themes are identified and existing congruence and discrepancies across findings are discussed. Results show that although conventional methods of transportation research were adopted in virtually all COVID-19 studies, no pre-pandemic study was particularly instrumental in the development of this segment of transportation literature. The COVID-19 segment appears to have developed its own independent knowledge foundation, in that, it does not systemically and frequently look back at any particular pre-pandemic reference. Potential impacts of this newly developed segment on the metrics of transportation journals are quantified and discussed.
Transportation science
SARS-CoV-2
COVID-19
transportation research
pandemic
Author
Milad Haghani
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Rico Merkert
The University of Sydney Business School
Ali Behnood
Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT)
Chris De Gruyter
RMIT University
Khashayar Kazemzadeh
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory
Hadi Ghaderi
Swinburne University of Technology
Zahra Shahhoseini
MTIA Major Transport Infrastructure Victoria
Vinh Thai
College of Business and Law
Elnaz Irannezhad
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Behnam Fahimnia
The University of Sydney Business School
S. Travis Waller
Technische Universität Dresden
Australian National University
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
David A. Hensher
The University of Sydney Business School
Transportation Letters
1942-7867 (ISSN) 1942-7875 (eISSN)
Vol. 16 1 43-88Subject Categories
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Transport Systems and Logistics
Economic Geography
DOI
10.1080/19427867.2022.2160294