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

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 paper introduces 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 required identifying material intensity challenges, eliciting requirements, mapping relevant domain work and creating missing ones, and assembling them all into BUD-MI. The template consists of three data input tabs, two mini-tools for data input assistance, four result generation tabs, and additional tabs for background data and ancillary information. A case study in Sheffield, UK, illustrates BUD-MI's functionalities, enabling bespoke material intensity results to be disaggregated across building elements and components. 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. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44498-026-00044-w.