Overview of research in construction and demolition waste management

Periodic analysis of publication in selected journals has been extensively carried out across various disciplines. It can assist in understanding the research and trends within a specific field quickly, which is particularly useful to fresh researchers. However, an examination of up-to-date publication regarding construction and demolition (C&D) waste management shows that similar studies have yet been conducted in this field. In this regard, the objective is to analyze the C&D waste management publication during a period of 2000 and 2009 in eight scholarly journals. The identified papers were analyzed in terms of number of papers published annually, author/institute?s contribution to the publication, research and data analysis methods used, and research topics covered. The results show that most of the publication appears in journals that are devoted to the broad waste including C&D waste, rather than in construction journals. The Hong Kong researchers have contributed the most to the C&D waste management publication from 2000 to 2009. It has been also found that survey and case study are the major research methods adopted, and descriptive statistics/analysis is used for data analysis by approximately 60% of the studies. Among the six research topics, C&D waste recycling and C&D waste management in general are the two that have received major research efforts. The results also indicate that human factors has entered the arena of C&D waste management research again after being out of researchers? interests for about six years. Keywords: Construction and demolition waste; Waste management; Research; Review.