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Overview
Staff
Research lines
Collaborations
Projects
Publications
Technologies
Solutions
Director
Jordi Cipriano

CIMNE’s Innovation Unit in Energy, Building, and the Environment (BEE Group) pioneers digital and sustainable solutions for buildings and cities, leveraging big and open data, AI, and smart tech to boost energy efficiency and bridge research with real-world impact.

We believe that the societal challenges we face are best addressed when innovative researchers and socially conscious organizations collaborate closely. Our multidisciplinary team works hand-in-hand with industry partners, community leaders, and authorities at both local and international levels to ensure innovation benefits everyone.
 
Our goal is to advance building energy management by increasing precision, enabling faster responses, and implementing adaptive, predictive controls that make buildings more responsive to users’ needs and preferences.
We harness the power of big data analytics to make energy data more accessible and valuable for professionals and companies—reducing costs, and increasing reliability and practical application. Through personalized energy services, adaptive visual interfaces, and mobile applications, we empower stakeholders to make informed decisions.
 
For building users, we strive to present energy data in a clear, user-friendly way, helping them access the most relevant information and personalize their energy experience, empowering communities, and making control more intuitive and effective for all.

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Contact

Terrassa

GAIA Building (TR14) Campus Terrassa


Rbla. Sant Nebridi, 22 


08222 Terrassa (Barcelona)

 

Tel: +34 937 398 987


info.beegroup@cimne.upc.edu

Lleida

Turó de Gardeny, s/n,

Edifici H3, Planta 1, Oficina 11

25003 Lleida

 

Tel: +34 873 99 13 54

info.beegroup@cimne.upc.edu

Management Staff

Jordi Cipriano

Director

Research Staff

Daniel Pérez

Research Engineer

Jaime Martí H.

Research Professor

Stoyan Danov

Staff Scientist

Jordi Carbonell

Research Engineer

Gerard Mor

Geomechanics and Hydrogeology

Josep Mayos

Research Engineer

Mª Teresa Sellart

Research Engineer

Collaborators

Alvaro Luna

UPC & Staff Scientist

Xavier Cipriano

Senior researcher

Research Centers and Universities

Public Institutions

Consultants and Architecture

Utility companies

Manufacturers

Social Housing

International & NGOs

Finished projects

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BEE Group drives technology transfer by transforming research into real-world energy and environmental solutions, creating spin-offs and tools that deliver measurable social and economic impact.

As CIMNE’s Innovation Unit in Building, Energy and Environment, BEE Group is deeply committed to technology transfer with tangible social and economic benefits.
 
Since 2001, BEE Group has participated in dozens of local and international projects, leading to the creation of successful spin-offs like Beedata Analytics and Inergy, as well as innovative tools such as ENMA (a scalable big data platform for energy data analysis), BEE Geo (a web-based geographical benchmarking tool), and BeePV (a personalized photovoltaic optimization tool). These solutions reflect the BEE Group’s mission to turn cutting-edge research into practical applications that address the needs of smart cities, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability.

Working closely with CIMNE’s Technology Transfer and Innovation unit, BEE Group ensures that research outcomes are protected, valorized, and commercialized, supporting the creation of new ventures and fostering collaborations with global researchers, organizations and users.

This joint effort guarantees that innovation reaches the market, creating real value for communities, industry, and society, while supporting CIMNE’s broader mission of innovative research for societal and environmental benefit.

Technologies

Open-Source Big Data Architecture for Smart Cities and Buildings

ENMA is an open-source big data architecture by CIMNE that stores, manages, and analyzes massive amounts of energy and urban data. Currently deployed in Barcelona serving 10,000+ buildings, it enables real-time data collection, AI-powered analytics, and semantic harmonization to drive energy efficiency and actionable decisions for real-time savings.



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The BEE Group leverages decades of expertise in research, innovation, and technology transfer in green energy to deliver cutting-edge, open-source solutions specifically designed for communities and public authorities.

BEE Mind

Maximizing Efficiency and Savings in Public Buildings

BEEMind is a comprehensive digital environment where artificial intelligence (AI) helps address current climate and energy challenges. More than a centralised data repository, BEEMind is a solution for digitalizing heterogeneous data of different natures to analyse, plan, and optimise the energy and environmental behaviour of buildings and cities.

As a one-stop platform, BEEMind empowers municipalities, organizations and communities to achieve more efficient energy management based on real data and key insights. This spearheads progress toward zero-emission cities and buildings.

BEEMind is based on an open-source platform, offering a flexible structure by delivering two specialized solutions:

 

    • MindCity, for municipalities and local governments: enables visualization of climate vulnerability maps, identification of solar installation opportunities, and informed decision-making in energy rehabilitation.
    • MindOpera, for intelligent building management: helps control energy consumption, anticipate failures, and improve maintenance throuhg data integration and automated analysis.

MindCity

MindCity is a digital tool tailored for city councils, local consortia and public administrations that need to take informed strategic decision on energy, building rehabilitation, and climate resilience.

The MindCity solution allows for seamless integration and visualization of urban and social data filtered by territory, building or area, which facilitates global climate action.

Local and business leaders can use MindCity as a one-stop management tool for public or private buildings, developing efficient actions for decarbonizing critical infrastructure.

 

Who is this for?

    • Regional governments
    • Supramunicipal administration and consortia
    • Digital and energy promotion networks and entities
    • Town and city governments
    • Community transformation offices
    • Technical teams of medium and small city councils

Why MindCity?

Public climate policies require integrated, reliable and easily visualisable data. Mind City digitises and harmonises energy and territorial information to facilitate strategic decision-making with a direct impact on sustainability and efficiency.

What does it offer?

Massive data integration

    • Collection of energy consumption, sensor, equipment and public source data (DEXMA, Modbus, BACnet, meteorology, etc.).

Territorialised visualisation

    • Clear and interactive dashboards with maps, indicators, scenarios and simulations.

Automated and scalable analysis

    • Real-time and batch logical processes with an architecture based on microservices and technologies such as Kubernetes, Kafka and Neo4j.

Grant justification

    • Helps to identify objectives, justify actions and demonstrate impact when applying for public funds.

Use cases

Vulnerability Map: Detect vulnerable areas with solar and thermal radiation.

Energy Rehabilitation of Buildings: Identify and prioritize buildings with the greatest needs throughout the city.

Vegetation Index: Define and plan green areas for more climate-resilient cities.

 

Technology

    • Data harmonization with sectoral ontologies (SAREF, BIGG…)
    • Specialized databases:

Neo4j for institutional relationships and geolocation
HBase for raw data
InfluxDB for time series

    • Intelligent processing:

Outlier detection
Rehabilitation and photovoltaic scenarios with AI
Generation of KPIs (avoided CO₂, PR, self-consumption, equivalent households…)

Open Source for Public Administration

    • Scalability and interoperability
    • Deployment in Kubernetes with modular architecture
    • Compatible with open standards and data export in georeferenced formats
    • Designed for progressive, flexible and replicable adoption

MindOpera

MindOpera is a modular platform designed for public and private building managers, supporting multiple data sources and operating systems. It harmonises, integrates and analyses consumption, maintenance and generation data in real time, using artificial intelligence models to optimise operations and anticipate incidents.

Who is This For?

Public Administration and Institutions

    • Teams dedicated to heritage, energy and infrastructure maintenance
    • Medium and large city councils, especially those looking to transition to smart buildings
    • Local consortia, provincial councils and supramunicipal entities with centralised services.

Critical Infrastructures and Public Facilities

    • Hospitals and health centres
    • Universities and educational centres
    • Cultural, sports, and administrative facilities

Private sector with a portfolio of buildings

    • Maintenance companies and energy services
    • Business park or industrial estate managers
    • Administrators of properties and office buildings

Why MindOpera

    • Reduces supervision time and human errors
    • Improves service continuity and anticipation of failures
    • Optimises energy efficiency at portfolio scale
    • Offers interoperable communication with existing management systems

What Does it Offer?

    • Real-time data ingestion via industrial protocols such as Modbus, BACnet and SCADA.
    • Integration with platforms such as DEXMA and CMMS systems.
    • Automatic harmonisation and generation of operational indicators (self-consumption, PR, CO₂…).
    • Predictive maintenance and anomaly detection
    • Visualisations adapted to each infrastructure and building portfolio

Use Cases

    • Infraestructures.cat data orchestrator for over 10,000 buildings
    • SIME-ICAEN system: monitoring of energy savings of the Government of Cataloni
    • Aggregated supervision by maintenance companies and public consortiaCIMNE was honoured with the 2010 AINE Award in recognition of its innovation in the naval sector. The award is promoted by the Spanish Association of Naval Engineers (Asociación de Ingenieros Navales de España), AINE.

Technology

Mind Opera is based on a modular cloud architecture that combines orchestration with Kubernetes and real-time data ingestion with Kafka, as well as specialised databases such as HBase, InfluxDB and Neo4j. This infrastructure enables data from multiple systems (BMS, SCADA, sensors, etc.) to be integrated and harmonised, while artificial intelligence (AI) is applied for predictive maintenance, anomaly detection and the generation of operational indicators. This framework offers both high scalability and interoperability.

Open Source for Public Administration

The International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering was accredited as a ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ by the Spanish State Research Agency (attached to the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities) for the period 2019–2023.

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