Multi-disciplinary collaborative building design—A comparative study between multi-agent systems and multi-disciplinary optimisation approaches

The importance of collaboration between different design disciplines has been widely recognised by the building industry. Traditionally this is achieved through physical meetings between the representatives of different design groups. However, this is facing more challenges when dealing with large and complex design problems. Various approaches have been introduced to tackle this problem, such as multi-agent systems (MAS) and the multi-disciplinary design optimisation (MDO) approaches. The former represents an advanced, ICT-based framework which facilitates collaborative design through communication, data and knowledge sharing and negotiation while the latter represents a theoretical modelling approach which facilitates collaborative design through a thorough analysis of the technical problems. By comparing the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches in facilitating collaborative design, this paper provides a roadmap study for the development of collaborative building design.