BUD-MI: a template that optimizes material intensity data collection and utilization

Research Project, 2023 – 2026

Mapping construction material stocks is essential for understanding socioeconomic metabolism and informing the circular economy. However, spatial material stock studies often produce coarse results owing to challenges in material intensity development. This project develops BUD-MI (Bottom-Up Data: Material Intensity), a material intensity data collection template designed with three core objectives: streamlining the data collection process during building sampling, supporting cumulative research while ensuring project-specific relevance, and enhancing the utility of results for the construction industry. BUD-MI aims to assist researchers, students, and construction practitioners in developing material intensity data in line with these three objectives. The development process requires identifying material intensity challenges, eliciting requirements, mapping relevant domain work and creating missing ones, and assembling them all into BUD-MI. BUD-MI supports future material intensity data collection efforts, ensuring data quality, granularity, comparability, transferability, and availability, thereby advancing socioeconomic metabolism and circular economy research and practice.