Feature extraction and classification of climate change risks: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Risks brought by climate change are inevitable obstacles to global development. Clarifying the features of climate change risks helps us to further understand and cope with climate change. There lacks a systematic review of climate change risks in terms of feature extraction and classification. The bibliometric analysis can be used to analyze and extract climate change risk features. The literature in the field of climate change was searched in the Web of Science database. Coauthors, citations, bibliographic coupling, co-citations, and keyword co-occurrence were analyzed. From five dimensions including nature, politics, economy, society, and culture, the risk features of climate change were extracted and summarized. Through text mining and cluster analysis, the climate change risk feature system was established, which is embodied in five different aspects: ecosystem and sustainability; uncertainty, vulnerability, and efficiency; behavior and decision-making; governance and management; and adaptation and mitigation. The feature system reflects that the current climate change risk presents strong variability and that the risk boundary is gradually blurred. The areas affected by risk are expanding and deepening. The strategies and governance for addressing risks are gradually diversified. This research contributes to the domain of climate change risk identification and assessment. The features of climate change indicate that we need to adjust policymaking and managerial practices for climate change in the future. Interdisciplinary cooperation, human cognition and preferences, public participation in global governance, and other unnatural factors related to climate change should be strengthened with a more positive attitude.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Climate change; Feature system; Governance and management; Risk management.