The Verge, in reporting by Justine Calma, profiles how the Colorado ski-resort town of Vail is turning to AI to help fight wildfires as climate change raises fire risk across the western US — a state that has seen 11 of its 20 largest fires in just the last five years. Vail is adopting HPE's new AI Smart City Solution, and notably becomes the first municipality in the US to do so. The article traces how the project came together quickly in 2025: while watching a wildfire burn roughly 30 miles from town in July, town manager Russell Forrest saw that rapid detection and response made a decisive difference, and connected with HPE and Kamiwaza — described as having developed an AI orchestration platform — to explore how AI could help. Developed alongside Kamiwaza, NVIDIA, and several other technology companies, the solution aims to make it faster and easier to analyze footage the town already captures from cameras mounted on buses and high vantage points on the mountains, turning existing infrastructure into an early-warning capability. Forrest frames wildfire preparedness as a permanent reality of mountain life. Beyond fire detection, the platform underpins a broader update to Vail's city services. For a mainstream technology audience, The Verge's coverage highlights both the promise and the practicality of applying AI orchestration to public safety at the municipal level, with Kamiwaza's platform at the core of the deployment. (The full article is behind The Verge's subscriber wall.) Read the full article on The Verge.
Source: The Verge — Read the full article