Globally, disaster risk management (DRM) has gone through a criterion transpose from static to a technology-based proactive approach in managing disasters including natural and anthropogenic disasters. This study aimed at exploring this research niche and to identify the main topical issues currently underway, such as the most disaster risk management techniques and prevalent geographical locations using scientometrics techniques. The result reveals that studies on DRM during the period of investigation witnessed an increase from early 2000 and peaking in 2017 followed by 2016 with a Kolmogorov-Smirnoff goodness-of-fit of 0.9672. More so, there exists a decline in year 2018 with about 144 published articles on DRM. However, research output fluctuated during the survey period between 1990 and 2004; for instance, the result shows that the research published on DRM in year 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995 are six, seven, five, seven, three and seven articles, respectively. In this study, the contribution of different nations and country collaboration to different sub-categories of disasters was examined. Global distributions of scientific articles tailored to DRM research across different environmental and disaster issues that demonstrate the development of analytical tools used to detect them and the researchers' production from various nations in both developed and developing countries were evaluated. Despite the recurrence of climate-related disasters in some parts of the world, relevant studies, disaster impacts and support systems remain poorly understood and not well explored.
Keywords: Disaster risk management; Research trend; Scientometrics; Systematic mapping.