Every revolution starts small. Facebook began in a Harvard dorm room. Starbucks in a modest Seattle coffee shop. Ci Global began in a kitchen – after a burst pipe shorted a socket and sparked the idea for a smart socket that prevents electrical fires.
After watching the Grenfell Tower disaster unfold in 2017, and learning that it was caused by a faulty fridge-freezer, I devoted myself to developing the technology that would prevent such a tragedy ever happening again.
The result was the Ci Socket: a product that flew in the face of standard reactive technologies by acting to stop electrical fires before they start. But that was only the beginning. Our mission has always been bigger: to make fire prevention the standard, not the exception, and to embed safety intelligence at the heart of every home, building, and city.
Building blocks of an intelligent safety system
The system we have created, Ci Safe, is both the embedded safety technology inside every Ci product and the connected suite of prevention-first intelligent building safety solutions. Working together, these solutions detect and act before danger escalates – transforming passive buildings into active protectors.
Ci Sockets form the foundation – intelligent outlets with embedded Ci Safe technology that detect electrical faults, overloads, or other unsafe conditions, and cut power before they can cause a fire.
Ci Sensors detect hazards beyond the socket that traditional systems often miss, triggering an instant response to dangers such as water and gas leaks, poor air quality that can lead to mould, human presence, earthquakes, and more.
Ci Command & Control is the command layer of the system, giving building management, fire crews, and emergency services real-time visibility, remote control, and automated decision support across connected spaces.
Ci Inside takes the revolution deeper, enabling manufacturers to embed Ci Safe technology into their products, from white goods and HVAC units to EV chargers. The modules detect risks, trigger alerts, and prevent electrical fires while also acting as built-in ‘black boxes’ that can prove compliance or no-fault when incidents occur.
What makes the Ci Safe system truly transformative is that these solutions do not just work in isolation. Through shared protocols, unified data layers, and AI-driven orchestration, they function as a single, coordinated safety system. This is smart building infrastructure that scales from individual sockets to entire cities, ready to prevent danger before it escalates – anytime, anywhere.
The city that learns to protect itself
Imagine a city where every building is part of a vast safety network, continuously sharing intelligence about electrical health, environmental conditions, and emerging risks. The city you’re picturing is not science fiction – it’s the Ci Safe system in action.
Our connected building safety system of intelligent sockets and sensors continuously gathers data on temperature fluctuations, energy consumption patterns, abnormal device behaviour, and more.
This information flows to the cloud and becomes accessible through our Ci Connect app or integrates with building management systems and emergency response dashboards. Individual buildings become nodes in this network – and each socket, each reading, each emergency prevented helps the entire system learn how to protect every building more effectively.
Take an overheating server in a logistics hub. Ci Safe does not wait until it catches fire; it spots the issue as soon as the server starts drawing excessive current. The system then automatically adjusts cooling and alerts facilities management, preventing what could have been a catastrophic data centre fire.
Or consider a residential tower where embedded humidity sensors detect unusual moisture patterns. Maintenance teams receive targeted alerts about potential mould risk, allowing them to act early and prevent health issues that might otherwise develop silently over months.
While the system is designed to act autonomously, it supports human decision-making as well. The Ci SafeMap platform provides a real-time command view of building-wide risks, alerts, and sensor activity. In an emergency, fire crews can even access 3D maps through an AR-compatible headset, allowing them to move through a digital twin of the building as if navigating a video game.
The Ci Safe system can also be integrated with existing safety platforms like Hassantuk in the UAE and SAGA in Saudi Arabia – complementing, not replacing, these national systems to support citywide fire prevention and help protect millions of people at work and at home.
Why citywide building safety can’t wait
Electrical faults are now one of the leading causes of residential fires globally. Housing inequality, substandard devices, and regulatory gaps leave millions exposed. External flammable cladding has only made things worse.
But fire isn’t the only threat. Across the UK, poor air quality, damp, and mould are making homes unsafe to live in. The death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in 2020 brought this crisis into sharp focus, leading to Awaab’s Law, which will require landlords to fix mould and damp within strict timeframes. In many buildings, these problems go undetected until they become serious health hazards.
Nowhere is immune, but cities are more at risk than most. Urbanization and water scarcity are straining firefighting infrastructure to breaking point. Climate change is compounding the problem: as temperatures rise, fire hazards intensify.
Existing fire safety systems are insufficient to meet these growing threats. Most are entirely reactive. They wait for smoke or flames before responding. But by then, lives are already at risk, and property is already being destroyed.
This is why cities need intelligent systems like Ci Safe. Residents gain the security of knowing every electrical pathway is monitored and protected around the clock. Building managers get unprecedented visibility into their infrastructure’s health. City authorities acquire life-saving infrastructure that continuously evolves to keep buildings and inhabitants safer.
In today’s world, the traditional wait-and-see approach simply doesn’t cut it.
Smart building infrastructure that saves lives
The future of building safety isn’t to be found in individual alarms or isolated sensors. It lies in citywide prevention – a connected building safety system that continuously learns, adapts, and protects.
When we picture the cities of tomorrow, we imagine sleek facades and dazzling digital displays. But true intelligence won’t be on show – it will be part of the building’s DNA – embedded in the walls, integrated into systems, and flowing through every electrical pathway like a constant current of protection.
We don’t just need smart buildings that adjust temperature or optimise energy use. We need intelligent safety infrastructure – a silent guardian, protecting every home, every building, every city. The technology exists. The need is urgent. The journey to a safer future starts today.
