Research Trend Analysis of Geospatial Information in South Korea Using Text-Mining Technology

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze geospatial information (GI) research trends using text-mining techniques. Data were collected from 869 papers found in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) database (DB). Keywords extracted from these papers were classified into 13 GI domains and 13 research domains. We conducted basic statistical analyses (e.g., frequency and time series analyses) and network analyses, using such measures as frequency, degree, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality, on the resulting domains. We subdivided the most frequent GI domain for more detailed analysis. Such processes permit an analysis of the relationships between the Research Fields associated with each GI. Our time series analysis found that the Climate and Satellite Image domain frequencies continuously increased. Satellite Image, General-Purpose Map, and Natural Disaster Map in the GI domain and Climate and Natural Disaster in the Research Field domain appeared in the center of the GI-Research Field network. We subdivided the Satellite Image domain for detailed analysis. As a result, LANDSAT, KOMPSAT, and MODIS displayed high scores on the frequency, degree, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality indices. These results will be useful in GI-based interdisciplinary research and the selection of new research themes.