  Co-simulation is a promising approach for the modelling and simulation of
complex systems, that makes use of mature simulation tools in the respective
domains. It has been applied in wildly different domains, oftentimes without a
comprehensive study of the impact to the simulation results. As a consequence,
over the recent years, researchers have set out to understand the essential
challenges arising from the application of this technique. This paper
complements the existing surveys in that the social and empirical aspects were
addressed. More than 50 experts participated in a two-stage Delphi study to
determine current challenges, research needs and promising standards and tools.
Furthermore, an analysis of the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats
of co-simulation utilizing the analytic hierarchy process resulting in a
SWOT-AHP analysis is presented. The empirical results of this study show that
experts consider the FMI standard to be the most promising standard for
continuous time, discrete event and hybrid co-simulation. The results of the
SWOT-AHP analysis indicate that factors related to strengths and opportunities
predominate.
