Advancing Mass Timber Construction: Insights into Hygrothermal Behavior and Field Monitoring of Engineered Wood Structures

Mass timber products such as cross-laminated timber and glulam are increasingly adopted as low‑carbon alternatives to conventional materials primarily due to their reduced embodied emissions. However, the hygroscopic nature of engineered wood introduces challenges related to moisture management, and durability. This paper underscores the importance of effective moisture management and monitoring to ensure the resilience of mass timber buildings under present and future climate conditions. It reviews the fundamentals of heat, air, and moisture (HAM) transfer in wood-based assemblies and examines modelling approaches including numerical simulations, stochastic methods, and machine learning. The paper highlights the critical role of long-term field monitoring for capturing real-world variability, construction-phase exposure, and in-service performance, while supporting model validation. To address current limitations in cross-project comparability and knowledge transfer, standardized sensor-based monitoring frameworks and improved modelling tools are advocated to enable real-time moisture tracking and risk-informed mass timber building design in Canada.