How the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the landscape of transportation research: An integrative scoping review and roadmap for future research

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars across all domains of science and engineering mobilised their efforts to address its far-reaching societal problems. Transportation researchers were no exemption. With mobility restrictions being front and centre of the pandemic, many researchers shifted their focus to this issue, and as a result, a new cohort of transportation science was developed within a short period of time. Here, we examine more than 400 studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic published across transportation journals during 2020 and 2021. The aim is (i) to scope this newly developed segment of transportation research, (ii) outline the diversity of pandemic-related issues across various divisions of the transportation field and (iii) provide a roadmap for the continuation of this line of research. Common themes in pandemic research within the transportation field are identified and existing congruence and discrepancies across findings are discussed. The study also highlights how pandemic-related topics across different domains of transportation research can be interconnected and have implications for another, requiring a holistic integrative overview. Results show that no pre-pandemic study was particularly instrumental in the development of this section of transportation literature, and that, it can be considered a nearly independent body of transportation science. It is expected that the outcomes of this work will contribute to systematising this segment of the literature and provide insights about areas where research has been produced to near saturation, as well as areas that need most attention from transportation researchers, particularly moving forward and coming out of the pandemic.