Mapping the knowledge domains of research on fire safety – an informetrics analysis

•Mapping knowledge domain was proposed to systematically analyze fire safety.•Temporal-spatial distribution of publications was visualized and analyzed.•Three main knowledge bases of fire safety studies were captured.•Research hotspots and frontier topics were visually explored using burst analysis. To understand the current status and the development of fire safety studies, explore the knowledge bases and research frontiers, 2027 fire safety-related papers from 2000 to 2019 were retrieved from the SCIE and SSCI databases of the Web of Science platform as data samples. Bibliometric analysis methods for informetrics, such as co-occurrence analysis, co-citation analysis, and burst analysis of keywords were adopted for comprehensive visualization analysis of fire safety studies by means of two tools of mapping knowledge domains. The results show that China has the highest number of publications in the country/region and that the University of Science and Technology of China has the highest number of publications of relevant institutions. Analysis of flame retardance, thermodynamics and flame retardant polymer development of graphite and other nanomaterials are the knowledge bases in the field of fire safety studies. Fire Safety Journal, Fire Technology, Fire and Materials, Journal of Fire Sciences, and Building and Environment are the core journals in this field. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, Fire Safety Journal and Fire Technology are the top 3 journals related to fire safety studies of tunnel and underground space. The research topics were aggregated into three core paths: the “fire safety of building and tunnel” path, the “combustion behavior-simulation analysis” path, and the “flame-retardant material” path. Building and tunnel fires, forest fires, and materials science engineering have been hot research areas in recent years. At present, the basic theory and research system of fire safety studies are essentially completed, and there are many future research directions with extensive branches. The fire safety of tunnel and underground space, intelligent firefighting and rescue, the basic theories and research systems in the field of fire and flame retardant materials represent the current frontiers of fire safety studies.