The Institute for Energy, the Built Environment, and Smart Systems (EBESS) designs and enables the built environments of the future, developing climate friendly, sustainable, resilient, and sentient built systems that meet the meet environmental, economic, and societal needs of global, culturally diverse people and their communities.
The built environment’s buildings, cities, and transportation infrastructure are at the center of civilization’s 21st and 22nd century challenges, opportunities, and solutions. Over 40% of energy consumption and carbon production is produced by building and operating society’s physical infrastructure. As the global population continues to grow and place increasing stress on the natural environment, we need to continue to do more with less, increasing economic and social value by using smarter, networked spaces and materials.
Critical technology advances from many disciplines present new answers and avenues for addressing the environmental needs. From smart sensors and edge computing, immersive interfaces, to new materials and new types of transportation, the built environment is the setting for exploring new, smarter, connected, and informed solutions to humanity’s needs in the coming century.
The EBESS Institute was created to take on the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly networked, connected, smarter and more advanced built environment and building industry. EBESS is a research, education, and industry engagement initiative designed to bring expertise from Rensselaer together with government, industry, and humanitarian organizations. Our mission is to connect leading technology thinking from across the spectrum of Rensselaer polytechnic academic and research programs with forward-looking organizations, applying collective advances to develop practical solutions on real world projects.
