Orivia Tech, Civic Technology Company
Civic technology for the lives our infrastructure holds.
Smarter buildings. Safer communities. A workforce ready for what comes next.
Orivia Institute builds civic technology and applied research, and trains analysts, for the moments when clean energy compliance, public safety, and infrastructure resilience cannot afford to fail.
Where Data Meets Understanding. Because what protects us deserves to be protected. Our homes. Each other. Our planet.
What We Solve
Three domains. One mission.
The buildings where we live, work, and heal are more than just structures; they are where our lives unfold. Safety, resilience, and sustainability shouldn't exist in silos when they meet in the same rooms every day. Orivia exists at this vital crossroads.
Public safety
When the grid fails, the heat wave peaks, or the storm arrives, public safety depends on buildings, systems, and decisions that hold under stress. We build the intelligence layer that helps first responders, emergency managers, and community institutions prepare, respond, and recover.
Resilience
Communities need anchor institutions that serve people every day and stay online when it matters most. We help schools, faith institutions, libraries, and nonprofits become verified resilience hubs with the technology, funding pathways, and governance to back it up.
Clean energy
Buildings are the largest single source of emissions in most American cities and the clearest path to compliance with state and local BEPS laws. We deliver the building energy intelligence that makes clean energy retrofits measurable, fundable, and defensible.
The case study behind the work.
A 24-student field demonstration in a 104,000 square foot Maryland public library.
How We Solve It
Three methods. One loop.
We build to solve. We validate through research. We train to build. Most civic tech organizations pick one of these methods and partner for the rest. We do all three under one roof, as a single system. That is why our platforms actually ship to the communities they are built for.
Technology
We build deployed platforms, not pilots. The EcoGuard integrated platform, powered by BRACE™, is our flagship building energy intelligence stack. SafeEscape extends the same platform with inclusive emergency routing. Every engagement produces a Resilience Blueprint, the dual-purpose deliverable that pairs energy compliance with inclusive safety. Save the Grid, our joint initiative with Citizens for Climate Action, coordinates these deployments across the DMV.
Applied research
We validate and stress-test what we build. Our applied research program runs across pilot buildings, cohort studies, and governance scenarios on the EcoGuard integrated platform to verify our technology actually works in the field, and to define the emerging discipline of Building Energy Intelligence.
Workforce development
We train the people who will build the next version of this work. Lighthouse Fellows learn on the EcoGuard integrated platform our research is validating, and contribute to the evidence base that makes it sharper. Our Cognitive-Agility methodology extends the work into teams and partner organizations.
Flagship Technology
EcoGuard and BRACE™
EcoGuard is a deployed building energy intelligence platform powered by BRACE™, our proprietary Building Retrofit Analysis, Compliance, and Economics Engine. It reads your building the way a utility analyst reads a meter, then tells you exactly what to do about it.
Compliance clarity
Mapped to Maryland, Montgomery County, and DC BEPS requirements. Risk, deadlines, and penalty exposure in one view.
Resilience readiness
Assessment of how your building performs under stress conditions. Grid outages, heat waves, extreme cold. Score plus pathway to resilience hub designation.
Funded retrofit pathways
Matching to EmPOWER, IRA, MEA, Resilient Maryland, and utility programs. No money left on the table.
Governance you can defend
Every output documented, auditable, and ready for county, investor, or board review.
How BRACE™ works
BRACE™ applies proprietary metrics spanning compliance risk, retrofit prioritization, climate vulnerability, and real-time building performance. Clients receive actionable intelligence in plain language. The engine itself is protected IP.
Workforce Development
The Responsible AI Lighthouse Fellowship and beyond
We do not wait for the talent pipeline to show up. We build it.
Responsible AI Lighthouse Fellowship
Twelve paid fellows, Maryland Department of Labor funded, launching July 2026. Fellows train for four weeks, then deploy on real buildings using the same platform that serves our paying clients. Fellowship graduates leave with a portfolio, a reference network, and a direct pathway into Orivia or partner employer roles.
Cognitive-Agility methodology
Our proprietary framework for teams making complex decisions under pressure. Used inside Orivia and offered to partner organizations.
Applied Research
Defining the field, not just working in it
Civic technology is only as strong as the research underneath it. We publish. We pilot. We define.
Building Energy Intelligence as an emerging field
A mixed-methods, multi-site research program running across pilot buildings in Maryland, DC, and beyond. We are validating building energy intelligence as a distinct occupational and operational domain, with its own competencies, credentials, and professional pathway.
The Inheritor's Paradox
Our working thesis on the contradiction at the heart of civic intelligence. The same systems that can help communities survive climate, grid, and governance shocks are also the systems driving fastest resource depletion. Carbon-per-Inference, our proprietary metric for AI's inference-layer emissions, came out of this work.
GridHack
Our annual civic hackathon at bwtech@UMBC. Students from six Maryland universities, three of them HBCUs, solve real BEPS and grid resilience challenges using live county building data. GridHack doubles as the public audition for the Lighthouse Fellowship.
Governance Layer
The Inheritance Accord
Every system we build is governed by the Inheritance Accord, our foundational framework for community data rights, equitable benefit distribution, and responsible co-intelligence. The Accord is not a policy document. It is the governance layer that sits across every building, fellowship, and research decision Orivia makes.
Key principles include:
- Community data sovereignty
- Transparent co-intelligent decision making
- Equitable resource allocation in crises
- Measurable accountability to the communities we serve
Proof and Partnerships
Deployed. Verified. In the field.
Proof in the Data.
What an AI-augmented audit lens reveals when pointed at a single jurisdiction's BEPS-covered building stock. It surfaces dollars, megawatts, and human capacity that conventional benchmarking misses.
0
Buildings Modeled
Montgomery County BEPS dataset
0M
Sq Ft Analyzed
Covered by AI-augmented audit logic
$0.0B
Unclaimed Value
Modeled efficiency + grant-eligible upside
0 MW
Sheddable Load
VPP-eligible flexibility identified
Jurisdiction-level dataset · AI-augmented BEPS research · bwtech@UMBC
0 congregate shelters were hiding inside the BEPS data.
Cross-referencing building use, square footage, and occupancy load surfaced 0 people of modeled emergency shelter capacity already standing in Montgomery County.
0
K-12 Schools
0
Other Education
0
Worship
0
Gyms + Fitness
0
Performing Arts
"In all five markets, the top concern of all service providers involves workforce constraints…"
Duer-Balkind et al., IMT, 2024
We're building the discipline and the pipeline.
0
Fellows
0+
Applicants
0
MD Universities
Jul 6
Cohort Launch
The Responsible AI Lighthouse Fellowship. Maryland DOL-funded, applications open until May 15, 2026.
Who We Serve
Built for the institutions that carry their communities
Municipal and state partners
Scalable building energy intelligence, resilience planning, and workforce pipeline development across large portfolios.
Community anchor institutions
Nonprofits, faith institutions, libraries, schools, and HBCU-affiliated sites that need to become the places their neighborhoods can count on.
Building owners and portfolio managers
Especially those facing BEPS compliance pressure and looking for a defensible, funded pathway forward.
Utilities and program administrators
Evidence-based retrofit prioritization at community scale.
Foundations and funders
Partners working on the intersection of public safety, climate, workforce, and civic intelligence governance.
Where we work
Built for the buildings that hold communities together.
About Orivia
Civic AI and community resilience, by design
Orivia Institute LLC, doing business as Orivia Tech, is a civic technology company resident at bwtech@UMBC's Energy and Cyber Incubator. We were founded by Michelle Ware-Allen, a certified program manager with fifteen years of federal IT program experience at NIH and HHS.
We build for how people actually live. Most of us spend the majority of our lives inside the infrastructure we call home, community, work, and medical facilities. That infrastructure should serve us every day, and it should hold when things go wrong.
Michelle's lineage includes her father, Clarence Tucker, who served as Deputy Mayor of Fire and Police in Akron, Ohio. That public safety perspective keeps our standard simple. Build civic technology that serves people where they live their lives, and make sure it still works when everyone is counting on it.
What we inherit, we protect. What we build, we pass forward.
Collaborate