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 21^st 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.

Complementary Models

The project has now progressed to linking two complementary models:

• A production model, tracing timber from forest resource to recovered products, including sawn timber and co‑products such as panel products and mill residues.
• A consumption model, tracking how much timber is used by different building types.

By linking these models, the framework can trace timber flows from forest resource through to specific building outcomes, bridging established construction markets (such as lightweight timber framing in detached and low‑rise housing) with mass‑ and hybrid‑timber applications.

Frame-and-Truss Fabrication Data

A major advance has been the use of detailed frame‑and‑truss fabrication data, developed in collaboration with industry partner Multinail.

Using data from 53 real residential projects, timber use has been analysed by:

• Structural subsystem (walls, floors and roofs)
• Component type
• Size, length and grade of timber

The findings – now being prepared for publication – shows where timber is used within typical housing and confirms the dominance of machine‑graded pine (MGP). This level of detail enables far more accurate modelling than previous high‑level estimates.

What-If Scenarios

With production and consumption models now linked, the framework can be used to explore “what if?” scenarios. For example:

• How would changes in framing design alter sawmill input requirements?
• Could fibre or grade substitution increase timber use while reducing overall processing effort?

This capability gives sawmillers, fabricators and builders a shared, evidence‑based platform for practical discussions about improvement, and provides the foundation for commercial case studies being taken forward with industry partners.

What is next?

The next phase of the project will focus on:

• Finalising and publishing the detailed fabrication data analysis
• Applying the framework to additional building types, including mass‑ and hybrid‑timber projects
• Working with industry partners to test real‑world scenarios to support investment and design decisions

By making timber flows clearer, comparable and open, the project is helping industry and policymakers understand how changes at one point in the system affect the whole – supporting smarter use of Australia’s domestic timber resources.

Learn more

Conference Paper: TIMBERTRACKER: AN OPEN-SOURCE WEB FRAMEWORK FOR VISUALISING SUPPLY AND DEMAND IN FUTURE CONSTRUCTION TIMBER VALUE CHAINS

For further information or to follow project progress, visit the project page:
An Open-Data Framework for Forest-to-Building Value Chain Mapping – ARC Advance Timber Hub

An Open-Data Framework for Forest-to-Building Value Chain Mapping