Lasting public value
A more sustainable built environment is the purpose of our work. We consider carbon, resilience, affordability, and wellbeing together, so better evidence can support decisions with lasting value.
Building Insights Together
Better places begin
with insight.
Discover what guides us
We connect international climate research, local knowledge, and responsible technology to help people make better decisions about the places we share.
01 / Our purpose
A sustainable future.
Grounded in everyday places.
Buildings shape how we live, the resources we use, and the opportunities around us. Understanding those connections is the starting point for meaningful change.
From UN buildings reporting to locally designed city models, BIT connects climate and physical conditions with policy, local knowledge, and the needs of communities.
Why we do this02 / What guides us
Technology in service
of people and place.
How we work matters as much as what we build.
Our purpose and principlesRespect for place
A city is lived as well as measured. Its physical environment, social fabric, and policy context matter. Local knowledge helps us understand what the data alone cannot tell us.
Evidence you can examine
Understanding should stand up to scrutiny. We preserve sources and methods, make assumptions and limitations visible, and keep the path from evidence to insight traceable.
Progress together
Good decisions need different perspectives. Collaboration and informed human judgment guide our work. We share knowledge wherever possible and learn from the people applying it.
03 / International perspective
Global perspective.
Knowledge of place.
Our work connects the international buildings and climate community with the decisions that shape individual places.
Our international workUNEP / GlobalABC
Global assessment
Informing the
buildings agenda.
Building Insights researchers are among the lead coordinating authors of the 2025–2026 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction.
Explore the reportIEA EBC
Research leadership
Evidence that
travels further.
Ian Hamilton led Annex 70, an international research collaboration on real building energy use and its application to policy and practice.
Explore the researchWorldGBC / BPIE
International dialogue
Connecting knowledge
with action.
Building Insights co-hosted a London Climate Action Week 2026 reception with WorldGBC, BPIE, and GlobalABC.
See the programme04 / Where we contribute
Shared challenges.
Practical possibilities.
Our developing capabilities support the people shaping public services, improving buildings, understanding risk, and choosing where to live.
Explore our offerings
05 / Purpose into practice
Research becomes
useful understanding.
City foundation models connect evidence across a place. Forge develops the intelligence and methods behind them. Core serves the models and indicators, preserving the evidence that makes them useful and accountable.
Represent the place
City-scale.
Locally designed.
A learned representation of a particular city. Earth observation, buildings, policy, and local knowledge come together to reveal patterns across the things that matter.
Explore city foundation modelsIn development / Mariposa, Kitchener–Waterloo
Develop the intelligence
Better methods.
Better models.
Forge is our internal knowledge and development system. It brings agents, evidence, analytical methods, and accumulated experience into the work of building and improving city foundation models.
Explore ForgeResearch and development / Guided by expertise
FORGETHE DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM
01
Assemble the evidenceSources · Local knowledge · Research
02
Develop and evaluateAgents · Methods · Analyst review
03
Build the next modelTested methods · Accumulated learning
Put intelligence to work
Insight you can
trace to its source.
Core is the operational interface for city foundation models and our global and country-level indicators. It preserves the evidence behind the analysis, with traceable updates and analysts in the loop.
Explore CoreModel access / Evidence preserved
CORETHE OPERATIONAL INTERFACE
City models & indicators
Analysis & interpretation
Methods & version history
Underlying evidence
Lineage · Provenance · Reproducibility
In development / Pilot testing
Buildings, inside and out.
Earth observation meets an ML-powered, privacy-protective LiDAR scanning app: a more complete view of buildings, from their surroundings to their interior spaces.
Explore whole-building analysisBuilt around the relationships that make a place.
The Mariposa experiment
A small place.
A world of
possibility.
Grounded in Kitchener–Waterloo, Mariposa is where we test how a city can be understood on its own terms. It brings our principles into the practical work of developing a model around a particular place.
Meet MariposaKITCHENER–WATERLOO, CANADA
Building Insights Together