Project update: Connecting forests, mills and buildings

ARC Advance Timber Hub Project “An Open-Data Framework for Forest-to-Building Value Chain Mapping” is addressing a major challenge for Australia’s forest and wood products sector: how to better understand, visualise and coordinate data across the entire value chain – from forest resource through processing to buildings.

Project Leader, Associate Professor Joe Gattas, from The University of Queensland School of Civil Engineering, presented at the FWPA Webinar – Navigating a Changing Landscape: Challenges, Opportunities, and Innovation in the Timber Industry, on the 21st April 2026. Below is a summary of the projects research outlined in the webinar presentation.

Why this research matters?

Research and data relevant to timber supply, processing and use are currently spread across many institutions, projects and datasets. This makes it difficult for industry, government and researchers to:

• See how domestic timber resources are really being used
• Identify inefficiencies and lost opportunities across the supply chain
• Test how changes in forestry, processing or building design affect outcomes such as resource efficiency, supply resilience and local manufacturing capability

This project responds by creating an open, integrated data framework that supports clearer communication, better decision‑making and more coordinated action across the sector.

What the project has achieved so far?

Measuring Timber Consumption

Early work has explored different ways to measure timber consumption in buildings.

• A geospatial “Timber Tracker” mapped timber volume per building across regions, helping separate housing density from timber use. While visually powerful, it offered limited insight for decision‑making.
• A “trees per building” material flow analysis followed timber from forest through sawmilling into a typical house, revealing the significant gap between the timber seen in a finished building and the processing effort required to produce it. This highlighted how grade recovery and product choices significantly affect resource efficiency.

Together, these early studies helped reframe timber use as a system‑wide issue, not just a building‑level metric.

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Source & image credit: Arc Advance Timber Hub