Smart city AI innovations transform Vail with SHI and HPE – News

Since artificial intelligence transforms vast amounts of city data into actionable insights, smart city AI innovations create sustainable, secure and human-centered urban ecosystems that redefine modern living.

To bring smart city AI innovations to life in Vail, Colorado, SHI International Corp. partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. to deploy cutting-edge solutions, including a digital AI civic ambassador — a friendly, conversational prototype that delivers real-time town information to residents and visitors alike, according to Jack Hogan (pictured), vice president of advanced growth technologies at SHI.

“What we have here is really a digital AI ambassador, our digital civic ambassador for the town of Vail, Colorado,” Hogan said. “We got involved with the town of Vail where we were able to apply some practical AI solutions to solve some big city challenges in a town that really only has 2,400 people but applies that in the times where they scale up to almost 50,000 in their peak season. SHI helped integrate and deliver with the partnerships of HPE, Kamiwaza, Vaidio, ProHawk and Blackshark. These are all the solutions that we use to create these outcomes.”

Hogan spoke with theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson at the Nvidia GTC Washington, D.C. event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how SHI is turning smart city AI innovations into reality in Vail, transforming the town through intelligent, data-driven solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

How SHI drives smart city AI innovations in Vail

Using AI-powered video analysis, SHI helps the town of Vail detect the earliest signs of wildfires. Through solutions, such as ProHawk and Vaidio, the company transforms video data into actionable insights — delivering smart city AI innovations, according to Hogan.

“We had the head of the fire department prevention … talked to them about the different camera feeds they had around the town, to be able to use that, to use a system with ProHawk to do restoration of that video in low-light scenarios, and bring that to a level that you can now start doing video analysis through AI, through the Vaidio solution, to identify the early stages of a wildfire,” Hogan said. “You can imagine the impact of a wildfire out of town like Vail, Colorado. It was something that really blew their mind and is an amazing solution, because what it’s now solving for is the loss of life.”

To help Vail meet the ADA Section 508 compliance deadline, SHI deployed Kamiwaza’s Accessibility Remediation Intelligence Agent, which automatically scanned and remediated archives, PDFs and images. Thanks to this agentic AI solution, Vail achieved full compliance on time, Hogan pointed out. 

“There’s a looming deadline of April next year … the federal government has a mandate called the 508 compliance requirement under the American Disabilities Act to ensure that all civic information is compliant for those that have hearing or vision challenges,” he said. “The Kamiwaza ARIA solution was the perfect answer for that. The town of Vail had budgeted three years and a couple million dollars to ultimately solve this problem; we solved the problem in literally a weekend using an agent.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of News’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Nvidia GTC Washington, D.C. event: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Nvidia GTC Washington, D.C. event. The sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

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