Producción Científica

Emerging contaminants (ECs) include a wide range of substances whose presence may pose a risk to the environment and human health. Research on cytostatic pollutants is increasing because the exponential growth of cancer treatments leads to higher discharge of cytostatic contaminants with wastewater treatment plant effluents. This systematic bibliometric review shows 4166 publications within the topic of ECs and cytostatic drugs in water bodies since 1996, mainly in the category of Environmental Science. China, Spain and USA are the most productive countries nowadays and Europe has 41,6 % of the publications. Research topics have shifted from identifying the presence of ECs, in the period 1996–2012, to understanding their fate, distribution, and long-term impacts as well as on developing removal technologies, in the period 2012–2023. 29 main keywords have been identified and classified into four thematic groups: contaminants, analytical techniques, water bodies and treatments. Principal component analysis has integrated them into two principal components (PC). PC1 includes keywords within the groups of water bodies and treatments, and it reflects 70 % of the original data variance; while PC2 represents the analytical topic, and it represents 20 % of the variance. The co-occurrence networks of keywords, analysed by VOSviewer, show four clusters in both periods, with “emerging contaminants”, “pharmaceuticals”, and “personal care products” as the most important. “Contaminants” that appear in the first period have been substituted by “treatment plants” in the last decade. The keyword “personal care products” shows the highest increase (14-fold), higher than “emerging contaminants” (13 times) and “cytostatic drugs” (10 times). In recent years, the research interest on the formation of transformation products during water treatments and their risks has increased as shown by the higher importance of keywords such as “transformation products”, “risk assessment” and “toxicity”, as consequence of the development of advanced oxidation treatments.

Major sudden disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, and fires, often cause significant casualties. Emergency evacuation is crucial in mitigating these impacts. Different types of disaster incidents vary significantly in terms of impact scope, suddenness, and urgency. Each type of disaster possesses distinct characteristics, necessitating varying requirements for emergency evacuation. Consequently, we conducted a bibliometric analysis and visual mapping of evacuation processes in major natural disasters from 2004-2023, analyzing 7213 publications from the Web of Science database via VOSviewer and ArcGIS. Our study identified three developmental phases: an initial phase (pre-2011) with 1169 publications, a growth phase (2012-2018) with 2772 publications, and an expansion phase (post-2019) with 3335 publications. This study provides a comprehensive review and classification of emergency evacuation theories and methods in major disaster scenarios. It emphasizes the necessity of assessing the scope and intensity of different types of major emergent disasters, defining and simulating the affected behaviors of the influenced populations, and formulating differentiated emergency evacuation strategies accordingly. Keyword analysis reveals two main trends supporting these findings: an increasing focus on complex evacuation modeling and simulation techniques, manifested in the application of various simulation-optimized microscopic and macroscopic models such as cellular automata, social force models, agent-based models, pedestrian flow, and network flow models, enhancing disaster understanding and prediction capabilities; and the strategic development of tailored evacuation strategies for specific disaster contexts, thereby improving disaster response efficiency. Three key future pathways for safety evacuation research are outlined: refining evacuation behavior models for greater accuracy, improving the coordination of complex, multi-level evacuation procedures, and integrating indoor and outdoor evacuation strategies more seamlessly. It establishes a forward-looking framework for advancing safety evacuation studies in major emergencies.

The study explored rural livelihood sustainability in South Asia and Africa through a bibliometric analysis and systematic review approach. The purpose of the study was to identify the trend of scholarly discourse, the dominant themes that have attracted scholarly interest over the past decade, and to shed light on the emerging opportunities for enhancing rural livelihood sustainability. The study carefully selected 139 articles sourced from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and other institutional websites. Our findings revealed noticeable growth in scholarly output over the past decade and identified some scholars with noteworthy contributions. Notably, it was found that the impact of climate change, drought, poverty, and food security on rural livelihoods has largely dominated the scholarly investigations over the period. However, the potentials of pyrolis, biochar, and dryland forestry for rural livelihood sustainability were found to be underexplored. In light of these insights, we recommend the scholarly community develop much interest in less explored areas that equally hold great potential for enhancing rural livelihoods. We also recommend that rural livelihood programming by policymakers must seek the integration of indigenous knowledge and be tailored to strengthen the resilience of rural households against the perils of climate change and weather variability.