Why the Built Environment Matters
Why the Built Environment Matters
Embedded Files
Buildings generate around 40% of global emissions, driven by the energy used to heat, cool, and power them, as well as by the carbon embedded in materials such as steel and concrete. As cities grow, choices about reuse, retrofits, and electrification shape long‑term climate outcomes. CITIESS helps cities and property teams find reuse opportunities, map retrofit pathways, and identify grid‑flexible assets through unified property intelligence.
Why Cities Struggle Today
Regulatory Void
Zoning and code information is buried in scattered documents that take months to interpret.
Simulation Strain
Traditional building‑ physics tools are slow, manual, and difficult to scale across districts.
Implementation Fracture
Feasibility, underwriting, and capital planning operate in disconnected silos.
Grid Blindspot
Cities lack clear visibility into how retrofits or electrification will affect local grid stress.
What CITIESS Does
CITIESS unifies zoning, parcel, climate, and grid data into one structured intelligence layer. It helps cities, utilities, and portfolio owners find strong reuse candidates, prioritize deep‑energy retrofits, and see how building clusters affect the grid. This leads to faster planning, clearer underwriting, and more confident decarbonization decisions. Its core capabilities include:
Property Intelligence Layer
A structured, explainable profile for every building, integrating zoning, parcel geometry, physical systems, climate exposure, and utility context.
Reuse & Retrofit Insights
Clear, auditable pathways based on building physics, regulatory rules, and local compliance constraints.
Grid‑Aware Modeling
Portfolio‑wide visibility into load curves, electrification readiness, and peak‑shift potential.
The CITIESS Platform
The CITIESS Platform
Built for Modern Cities
CITIESS is a geospatial intelligence platform on Google Cloud that turns fragmented property, zoning, climate, and grid data into clear, actionable insights. It helps cities, utilities, and real estate teams uncover reuse potential, plan deep‑energy retrofits, and understand how buildings interact with the grid at portfolio scale.
The Resilience Score
The Resilience Score gives planners and portfolio teams a clear baseline by turning complex building, regulatory, and grid conditions into a single metric that supports consistent evaluations and confident investment decisions.
Adaptive Reuse Potential: Viable conversion pathways based on form and zoning.
Deep‑Energy Optimization: Envelope upgrades and passive‑first load‑reduction strategies.
Grid Interoperability: Electrification readiness, peak‑shift potential, and grid impact.
How CITIESS Works
Passive‑First Intelligence
CITIESS evaluates buildings using a physics‑driven, passive‑first approach, delivering lower capital costs, reduced energy loads, and smarter electrification decisions.
Geospatial Ingestion
High‑resolution zoning, parcel, climate, and grid signals are processed in parallel.
Passive Load Minimization
Virtual building models explore daylighting, shading, envelope performance, ventilation, and solar potential.
AI Optimization Loops
AI-driven evolutionary algorithms and physics-driven constraint loops test thousands of retrofit scenarios to maximize capital efficiency and achieve net-zero.
Proven Approach
CITIESS is built on decades of real‑world adaptive reuse and retrofit experience.
The platform embeds repeatable decision logic that helps teams evaluate thousands of assets consistently, enabling faster, more confident planning across entire districts.
Who We Serve
Developers & Investors
Automated zoning interpretation, parcel triage, and feasibility insights.
Cities, Utilities & CCAs
District‑scale screening, vacancy‑to‑housing analysis, electrification planning, and grid‑aware forecasting.
Owners & ESG Teams
Portfolio optimization, retrofit prioritization, and long‑term value protection.
Technology
Technology
Built for Speed, Scale, and Explainability
CITIESS uses a three‑layer architecture that turns fragmented city data into clear, actionable building intelligence.
Liaison
Ingests zoning, parcel, building, climate, and grid data and converts messy files into a unified dataset.
Spine
Builds structured, explainable profiles for every building.
Engine
Runs advanced optimization across entire portfolios.
Why This Architecture Matters
Consistency Across Portfolios
Every building is evaluated using the same logic, making comparisons fair and reproducible.
Explainability for Planners
Insights are grounded in traceable data inputs, never a black box.
Actionable Outputs
Playbooks translate raw spatial data into practical steps for reuse, retrofit, and grid planning.
Enterprise‑Ready Infrastructure
CITIESS scales across thousands of assets using Google Cloud’s geospatial and AI tools, including BigQuery GIS, Earth Engine, and Gemini for reasoning and document parsing. This delivers fast performance, secure deployment, and smooth integration with existing systems.
Playbooks
Playbooks
Turning Building Intelligence Into Action
CITIESS converts complex property, zoning, climate, and grid data into clear, structured playbooks. These playbooks help cities, utilities, and portfolio teams prioritize assets, assess feasibility, and move projects forward with confidence.
Adaptive Reuse Playbook
Find Buildings Ready for New Uses
Identify which buildings can be converted based on zoning fit, structure, layout, and market feasibility.
What’s inside:
Zoning + regulatory fit
Structural + layout suitability
Conversion feasibility indicators
Potential new use pathways
Portfolio‑level prioritization
Deep Retrofit Playbook
Plan Energy‑Efficiency & Electrification Upgrades
Reveal tailored pathways for improving envelope performance, reducing loads, and preparing for electrification.
What’s inside:
Envelope + systems assessments
Electrification readiness
Passive‑first efficiency opportunities
Retrofit feasibility + cost modeling
Upgrade prioritization across portfolios
Grid Flexibility Playbook
Understand Grid Impact & Peak‑Shift Potential
See how buildings interact with local electric infrastructure and where demand‑response opportunities exist.
What’s inside:
Load curve analysis
Peak‑shift + demand‑response potential
Feeder + substation context
Electrification impact modeling
Grid‑aware capital prioritization
Why These Playbooks Matter
CITIESS playbooks turn raw intelligence into practical steps. They provide clear guidance, highlight feasibility constraints, and fit directly into the workflows used by planners, underwriters, and asset managers, without requiring custom data pipelines.
Core Team
Core Team
Deep Domain Expertise Meets Enterprise Execution
CITIESS is built by a team with backgrounds in urban systems, architecture, data science, EECS, and civil and environmental engineering. We combine real‑world adaptive reuse experience with enterprise‑scale engineering from companies like Apple and Cisco to deliver a platform cities can trust.
Ankita Hemmady, Co-CEO
Ankita is an urban systems thinker trained at UC Berkeley in Architecture and Data Science. Her work focuses on spatial computing, climate data, and city planning. She leads product direction, strategy, and partnerships with municipalities, utilities, and real estate groups.
Anuta Udyawar, CTO
Anuta is an enterprise engineer with more than twenty years of experience building large‑scale systems at Apple, Cisco, and Microsoft. She has a background in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and leads the technical roadmap, cloud architecture, and geospatial infrastructure for CITIESS.
Steve Hemmady, Co-CEO
Steve is an urban developer with a background in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He has extensive experience in zoning navigation, property acquisition, and energy‑efficient upgrades. Steve guides company strategy, risk modeling, and capital planning for cities and portfolio owners.
AI Steve, AI Operator Agent
AI Steve coordinates CITIESS backend workflows by linking geospatial ingestion, building physics modeling, market intelligence, and grid analysis into a unified decision pipeline. Operator functions within a human‑in‑the‑loop framework.
Contact & Pilot Engagement
Contact & Pilot Engagement
Let’s Build Smarter, More Resilient Cities Together
CITIESS is expanding through pilot partnerships with California municipalities, CCAs, utilities, and forward‑looking commercial property groups. We help partners identify underperforming buildings faster, prioritize reuse and retrofit opportunities, and connect building‑level decisions to district, resilience, and grid outcomes.
Our pilots are ideal for teams exploring district‑scale screening, building‑performance compliance, electrification planning, demand‑response targeting, or adaptive‑reuse strategy. Cities and utilities gain a faster path to high‑impact parcels and aligned capital planning. Owners and developers gain earlier visibility into retrofit potential, regulatory risk, and portfolio value.
Primary Engagement Areas
Municipal and district screening for building performance and resilience planning.
Utility and CCA collaboration around electrification, demand response, and virtual power plant opportunities.
Portfolio‑level retrofit and adaptive reuse evaluation for commercial property stakeholders.
Contact Channels
Technical Operations and Strategy: strategies@citiess.com
Executive and Product Partnerships: partnerships@citiess.com
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