Multirisk: What trends in recent works? – A bibliometric analysis

The issue of multirisk is coming under increasing scrutiny in the scientific literature and is of great concern for governments. Multirisk embraces different meanings: domino and cascade effects, NaTech events and the consideration of several natural hazards and their interactions. Scientific production relating to multirisk has been growing over the last 15 years. This review, based on 191 articles, proposes a new way of analyzing and presenting bibliographic results by the use of a global textual analysis. This analysis leads to identify seven main themes of research in the literature: three concern Domino Effects (46.6% of the articles), two are dedicated to the assessment of Multi-(hazard/vulnerability) Risk (28.7%), one deals with Natech issues (13.5%) and one concerns Cascade Effects in critical infrastructures (11.2%). A cross-issue analysis was performed on the basis of four criteria: objectives, hazards, the elements at risk considered, and the approaches used or developed in the articles. It provides general lessons on these items and proposes themes for future research on the topic of multirisk. [Display omitted] •Multirisk embraces domino, cascade, Natech and multi-hazard/vulnerability risks.•Distribution and global textual analyses are performed on the abstracts selected.•The literature has focused on seven issues since 2004.•A cross-issue analysis (objective, hazard, element at risk, approach) is presented.•Six themes are discussed of which some could be future research themes.