From risk management to AI-driven safety: A bibliometric review of occupational safety and health research

• This paper presents knowledge domain of occupational safety and health research. • 3511 documents are visualized and analyzed using bibliometrics. • Identifying research frontiers by combining timeline view with burst detection. • Knowledge bases, research hotspots, and frontiers are discussed. • The current challenges and perspectives for the future are proposed. Occupational safety and health research is crucial for sustainable social development, with a focus on preventing and reducing physical and psychological harm in the workplace . With the advancement of industrialization and modernization, issues in this field are becoming increasingly prominent. This study utilizes bibliometric methods, employing research literature from the occupational safety and health field between 2015 and 2024 as data samples, to explore knowledge domain. The results show the traditional Euro-American dominant model has gradually evolved into a new paradigm characterized by multinational collaborative participation. Research in this field increasingly exhibits transnational, inter-institutional, and multi-team collaboration. The research focus centers on public health and environmental exposure risk control, integrating process optimization and systems management approaches. Academic publications span multiple subfields; however, a unified large-scale collaborative network has yet to be established. Current research hotspots focus on Safety and Risk Management, Occupational Health and Safety Management, Construction Safety and Behavioral Risk Management, Safety Behavior and Accident Prevention, Safety Management Systems and Accident Analysis. The research frontiers involve topics such as machine learning, networks, deep learning, prediction, classification, and recognition, indicating that the field is moving toward a paradigm of intelligent and predictive safety systems. This study will provide scholars in related academia and industry with panoramic knowledge of occupational safety and health research, as well as research hotspots and future research directions.