Digital Technologies and Strategic Governance in Advancing SDG 6 through Bibliometric Insights

The rapid advancement of digital technologies has opened new pathways for addressing complex global water challenges aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). This study aims to analyze the scientific landscape of digital innovation and strategic governance in support of SDG 6, focusing on how technologies such as blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence are integrated into clean water and sanitation research. Offering a novel contribution to the field, this work employs a bibliometric analysis of 222 Scopus-Indexed articles published between 2016 and 2024. VOSviewer software is used to visualize co-authorship networks, organizational collaborations, country-level interactions, and keyword co-occurrence patterns to map influential trends and thematic developments. The findings highlight a substantial increase in global research output, with notable contributions from the United States, Indonesia, and China. Thematic clusters point to a shift from conventional governance models toward technology-enabled frameworks emphasizing transparency, efficiency, and real-time decision-making. Strategic management themes increasingly intersect with digital infrastructure, signaling a growing multidisciplinary focus in water sustainability research. This study provides a comprehensive overview of how digital transformation is reshaping global research efforts toward SDG 6 and offers evidence-based direction for future research. Opportunities for extending this work include system-level evaluations of smart water technologies, deeper integration of AI models, and the development of adaptive policy frameworks grounded in technical innovation.