Bibliometric methods in traffic flow prediction based on artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly applied to traffic flow prediction (TFP) to enhance prediction accuracy. This study utilizes bibliometric methods and network analysis measures to gain insights into the research status, development process, opportunities, and challenges of AI-based TFP research based on the literature data retrieved from the Web of Science core collection. The study first conducts basic statistical analysis of all papers. Subsequently, cooperation network analysis is conducted to identify the most productive countries/territories, institutions, and authors, the cooperative relationships, and the formed research communities. Co-citation network analysis is then employed to identify publications that have made outstanding contributions to the AI-based TFP field. Finally, the main path analysis of the paper citation network is used to analyze the knowledge diffusion process, while the keyword co-occurrence analysis is conducted to reveal the evolution characteristics of the research topics. Based on the bibliometric analysis results, we gain insights into the opportunities and challenges in this field from the perspectives of data, models, and applications, and provide pertinent suggestions for future research. Overall, this study can assist researchers in capturing the state-of-the-art and research directions in AI-based TFP.