Creating Digital Product Passports for Bio-based materials

The construction industry is under increasing pressure to reduce its environmental impact by adopting low-carbon materials and circular economy strategies. Bio-based materials such as Hempcrete offer regenerative alternatives to conventional products through carbon sequestration and renewable sourcing. Yet, their implementation remains limited by fragmented data, inconsistent performance assessment, and the absence of standardized digital documentation. At the same time, the transition toward circular practices depends on transparent and interoperable data frameworks that enable informed material decisions. This thesis addresses these challenges by exploring how Digital Product Passports (DPPs), integrated within Building Information Modeling (BIM), can improve data accessibility and support circular approaches in construction specifically for bio-based materials. It develops a BIM-based DPP proof of concept for Hempcrete to inform future frameworks for reliability, traceability, and broader adoption of bio-based materials. The study follows three phases: (1) a literature review on bio-based materials, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Circular Economy principles, and Digital Product Passports to establish the theoretical framework; (2) a review of two case studies to gather data on Hempcrete’s performance, LCA, and circular strategies; and (3) the development of a BIM-based DPP prototype with semantic layers. Results indicate that current BIM standards require custom property sets and supplementary ontological definitions to accommodate circularity data and the specific characteristics of hempcrete effectively. The developed prototype successfully centralized material-level and element-level lifecycle information, demonstrating a qualitative improvement in data accessibility compared to conventional documentation workflows, which do not support linked datasets, semantic structuring, or traceable identifier management. Validation processes also revealed where data transfer breaks down, including issues with parameter mapping, unit handling, naming conventions, and GUID tracking, confirming that limited software interoperability and persistent semantic inconsistencies remain significant barriers to scalability. The developed prototype successfully organizes Hempcrete-related data into an accessible and updatable format, demonstrating how digital tools can bridge the gap between sustainability research and practical implementation within the built environment. The research concludes by proposing a standardized data template and supporting ontology for bio-based materials, providing a replicable digital infrastructure that can guide future DPP development and contribute to the decarbonization of the built environment.