A Scoping Review and Bibliometric Analysis on Smart Firefighting in Buildings and Infrastructures

ABSTRACT Smart Firefighting is a concept that has emerged within the fire engineering and fire science disciplines in recent years. It can enable informed decision making and improved fire safety. However, its scope, definition, outcomes, and value to emergency management remain unclear. To investigate this, a scoping review and a bibliometric analysis were conducted, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses extension for scoping reviews guidelines. After the systematic screening process, 71 publications were selected for full review with the main goal of identifying relevant information. A bibliographic coupling analysis resulted in the identification of two main literature clusters related to (1) Understanding fire behavior and (2) Applying computational methods. The information obtained was classified in categories to obtain implicit or explicit definitions, research objectives, research methodologies, scientific domains, infrastructure domains, and emergency management phases. A definition of Smart Firefighting has therefore been suggested as: “the process of understanding and managing the fire safety information to support emergency management.” This is considered to be a cornerstone for emergency management. Smart Firefighting can be used to identify critical scenarios, estimate outcomes, and define the required know‐how for initial and contingency strategies. This work concludes that the outcome of Smart Firefighting during different emergency management phases is strongly dependent on the availability and accessibility of fire safety information and the ability of responders to interpret it and their willingness to use it.