Abstract:
DFOS (distributed fiber-optic sensing) technology has shown the potential to increase
the accuracy of measurement after years of development and experimenting in geoengineering
monitoring. To better understand the development of DFOS technology and its contribution to
geoengineering, an objective and data-driven review of the development process of DFOS technology
in construction was completed. The review was accomplished by using text mining methods on
the Web of Science, covering a wide range of relevant data, including 3970 articles from 1989 to
2023. The results indicate that DFOS technology research demonstrates the typical characteristics of
multi-author, multi-country, and multi-institution collaborations, spanning various research fields.
Over the past 35 years, the number of published articles has exhibited exponential growth, with
China making significant contributions and leading in terms of its total publication growth rate,
which has been higher than that of the United States since 2016. In the analysis of author keywords,
emerging technologies, such as machine learning and distributed acoustic sensing, have garnered
attention. The findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the development, impact,
and future trends of DFOS technology in geotechnical engineering, offering valuable insights for
researchers, scholars, and students in the field and inspiring new approaches for research methods in
this domain.
