Prof Amor undertakes research in the field of Construction Informatics, with a passion for the application of beneficial computer science techniques to the Architectural, Engineering and Construction industries. Achieving interoperability is his core research interest and to achieve this he investigates integrated environments which covers information modelling (e.g., BIM), code compliance checking, process modelling, user interaction, implementation frameworks, information mapping, and communication strategies. From 2003-2025 he coordinated the working group W78 (IT for Construction) for the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB - which comprises 500 international research organisations). He was also a founding member of CIB’s priority theme on Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions (2009-). He is Editor-in-Chief of the A-ranked online international Journal of Information Technologies in Construction (ITcon). He has been Primary Investigator on a number of major national and international research projects and successfully bid for approximately $18 million in research funding internationally and in New Zealand.
Research into the many aspects of interoperability has seen the development of a variety of sub interests in my research, which include a focus on:
• Automated code compliance checking to ensure that building designs are compliant with relevant codes and standards. This includes representation and encoding of computable aspects of codes and standards. Provisioning building information of sufficient scope and quality to enable compliance checks. Plus the orchestration of checks to ensure that codes are fully applied and are equivalent to approaches that councils would undertake.
• Platforms and frameworks which enable interoperability between independent design tools. Investigating issues from: the lowest levels of information modelling and the sufficiency of models being developed; through to tightly or loosely coupled approaches to integrate software tools; to discovery of tool services; to metrics for levels of interoperability; to the integration of processes and process models into interoperable systems.
• Establishing semantic interoperability between information models. A very specialised interest looking at the abilities of mapping languages and maintenance of semantic consistency based on mappings. Also looked at how and where mappings fail, to be able to understand and classify the levels of difficulty in particular mappings.
• Novel interfaces to the information space of projects. Explores the use of new software technologies (e.g., game engines) and new hardware (e.g., touch-surfaces, Kinect, Leap Motion) to navigate and interact with project information (e.g., AR/VR visualisations). Investigating the domain specific human-computer interaction needs of AEC professionals and their processes.