Multi-Agent Decision-Making in Construction Engineering and Management: A Systematic Review

Construction engineering and management (CEM) involves multiple stakeholders, complex interest relationships, and conflicts. All stakeholders must comprehensively consider the interests relating to a project to make decisions. Appropriate multi-agent decision-making can effectively coordinate and integrate the needs or expectations of all stakeholders, which can reduce conflicts, improve the success probability of the project, maximize the overall returns on interest, and contribute to the project's sustainability. Existing studies have begun to explore the associated theoretical framework and practical methods for multi-agent decision-making. However, early studies mainly focused on the conceptual theories of decision-making models and processes, such as stakeholder analysis, decision evaluation, and risk management. In recent years, increasing research has concerned the application of multi-agent decision-making in CEM. This paper is the first to use a comprehensive review approach to analyze multi-agent decision-making in CEM, providing an overall perspective. In this paper, 105 journal papers are identified and classified into four categories: (1) main concerns regarding multi-agent decision-making in CEM; (2) tools and methods of multi-agent decision-making in practice; (3) research tools and methods of multi-agent decision-making in CEM; (4) critical points on how to solve multi-agent decision-making problems. The findings of this study offer references for future trends in four regards, namely (1) knowledge management, (2) decision resilience, (3) the fusion of many techniques, and (4) technologies for future research.