Category: government

A few weeks ago, we had the chance to attend the world’s largest gathering of earth scientists at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Earth Sciences Conference.

More and more, research in the areas of climate change, agricultural resilience and space exploration rely on access to computing resources in the cloud. Because the cloud makes it easy to share massive amounts of data and allows them to only pay for the computing resources they need, they can accelerate their pace of research while reducing costs.

Last year at the AGU Conference, we announced Landsat on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a service to make Landsat data available for anyone to access from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Today, over 250,000 Landsat 8 scenes are freely available from Landsat on AWS. All Landsat 8 scenes from 2015 are available, along with a selection of cloud-free scenes from 2013 and 2014. All new Landsat 8 scenes are made available each day (~680 per day), often within hours of production.

Available near on-demand IT resources

Landsat on AWS is designed to allow fast access to Landsat data via a RESTful interface, reducing the time required for analysis. The data shared via Amazon S3 can be transferred programmatically and quickly to AWS cloud computing resources, and researchers can analyze data without needing to download it or store it themselves.

Landsat on AWS makes each band of each Landsat scene available as a stand-alone GeoTIFF, and scene metadata are available as text and JSON files. These individual files allow efficient and targeted data access. Landsat on AWS GeoTIFFs have “internal tiling,” which allows users to use HTTP range GET requests to access 512-pixel squares within each scene. This allows highly targeted access to data based on geography.

Half a year, half a billion requests

Within the first 150 days of the launch of Landsat on AWS (19 March 2015 to 16 August 2015), Landsat imagery and metadata were requested over 500 million times, globally.

The most requested WRF PATH/ROW combination is 040/036, which includes the southern California high desert and the location of the 2015 Lake Fire. The scar of the fire is rust colored in the visualization below, which is based on data acquired on 15 July 2015. This false color composite visualization was made in minutes with Snapsat, a web application built on AWS.

AGU attendees who learned about Landsat on AWS were eager to start using it themselves, sharing it with their students, or in using Amazon S3 to share similar data sets.

Learn how to access Landsat on AWS at http://aws.amazon.com/public-data-sets/landsat/

For the final installment of our AWS Military Fellowship Q&A series, we have the interview with Master Sergeant Kelly Butler (KB), U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer.

How did you get involved in this program? What attracted you to the AWS Military Fellowship?

KB: I began my journey as a combat engineer and was changed over to a government acquisition specialist in 2009. I have been stationed in Louisiana, Hawaii, and Illinois recently. This specific program has been around for a while and one of my previous supervisors completed this program and recommended it to me. Seeing value in working with industry, I submitted my application and went through the process and was eventually assigned to AWS.

What are your focus areas here at AWS? What are your focus areas within the Department of Defense (DoD)?

KB: I plan to engage senior AWS management to better understand the Senior Manager level input into strategies for project planning, project execution, and the procurement function throughout all phases. I also intend on learning about corporate culture, policies, and about AWS contracting/procurement processes during my time here.

What are some lessons learned at AWS that you are able to bring back to your role in the DoD?

KB: Amazon is customer obsessed. And this can be translated to my life within the DoD as being warfighter obsessed. Basically everything we do is for the warfighter to help keep us safe. Specifically in my day-to-day duties within AWS, I am learning about processes to move quickly and efficiently. These processes can be very helpful within the DoD.

What military values are you able to transfer to industry?

KB: Within the Army we live by leadership, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. As far as being a soldier with my acquisition background, I am able to relate to the Amazon Leadership Principles. I notice that this group operates as a team and practices selfless service.

Give an example of what has been your favorite part about your time at AWS?

KB: I have enjoyed working with outstanding people in the organization. I feel like a member of the team, since everyone is willing to share knowledge and experiences. I am set up for success during my training here, and am able to take initiative on projects that are important to me. And since I am not coming from an IT background, I am enjoying learning about the different services that AWS provides.

Previously we featured our discussions with Lieutenant Colonel Maria Schneider, U.S. Army Acquisition Officer and Captain James Thomas, U.S. Airforce Communications Officer.

We are so thankful for all of the fellows’ insight and for sharing their experiences with us. Looking forward to the great work they will do here at AWS and beyond.

The new world of mobility and being always on has encouraged organizations of all sizes to adopt the scalable, cost-efficient cloud computing infrastructure. Cloud computing allows for greater speed and flexibility than was ever thought possible, ushering in a new era of productivity and innovation in the public sector.

At the forefront of innovation, our customers, including Healthcare.gov and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), are leveraging the cloud to achieve their missions. Whether they are striving to scale a website for millions of users or are working to keep citizens safe, cloud computing helps them to move faster and reduce costs.

As we showcased in a previous post, Sue Gordon, deputy director of the NGA, said her agency has adopted cloud infrastructure technology “and now we’re going to put it to a test.” In government, deployment “is a balance between speed and accuracy…between national security and civil liberty, between unclassified and classified. With the help of partners like AWS, I cannot wait to see what we do.”

To read more about the world-changing successes of our customers, check out The Washington Post article, “Cloud is the new normal: Public agencies upgrade speed, agility and security.” More of these articles will be coming in the next few months, so keep checking back here for the latest Washington Post coverage.

In October, we announced that the real-time feed and full historical archive of original resolution (Level II) NEXRAD data is freely available on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for anyone to use. The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) is a network of 160 high-resolution Doppler radar sites that enables severe storm prediction and is used by researchers and commercial enterprises to study and address the impact of weather across multiple sectors.

Early adopters have used the data to cut their product development time and ask new questions about weather-related phenomena. Today, we’re excited to share two new tools that make it even easier for you to analyze NEXRAD data and incorporate it into your workflows.

WeatherPipe for archive analysis

Before NEXRAD on AWS, it was impossible to access the full NEXRAD Level II archive on demand. This limited the types of analysis that researchers could perform with the data. Dr. Michael Baldwin, an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, recalls his difficulties with obtaining funding for NEXRAD-related research because it was deemed “technically impossible” to get enough data to perform the analysis.

He said, “As soon as I heard about NEXRAD on AWS, I got very excited about the impact for science. Having the archive available on demand on AWS opens a new world of possibilities. I’m excited to dust off that proposal and incorporate NEXRAD into my research.”

Baldwin turned to his colleague Stephen Harrell to help make it easier for students and researchers to analyze the NEXRAD data. This led to the development of WeatherPipe, an open source java tool that streamlines the process of running a MapReduce job with NEXRAD data on AWS.

WeatherPipe marshals the NEXRAD data into usable data structures and runs the job in Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR). The output is a NetCDF file that you can display in Unidata’s Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) and other visualization tools.

Harrell, who works in Purdue’s research computing office and is completing a degree in the Computer Science department, worked with three classmates (Lala Vaishno De, Hanqi Du, and Xiaoyang Lin) to develop the WeatherPipe prototype in a matter of weeks. They’ve open sourced it to allow anyone to use the tool and contribute to the code.

Currently, the tool produces average radar reflectivity over time. Next, Harrell and Baldwin plan to use the tool to run more advanced and specific analyses, such as storm identification and classification. Ultimately, Baldwin wants to create a predictive model for high-impact weather events, such as tornadoes.

Notifications for event-based processing

For many NEXRAD users, it’s important to get new data as soon as it’s available. This is true for both the “volume scan” archive files (the data collected by the Doppler radar site as it scans the atmosphere) and the “chunks” data (smaller packages of data that are quickly transmitted as a real-time feed).

One of the top requests from early users was for an easier way to incorporate the NEXRAD data into event-driven workflows. Today, we’re excited to announce that notifications are now available for both types of data.

We have set up public Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topics for the “chunks” and archive data that create a notification for every new object added to the Amazon S3 buckets. To start, you can subscribe to these notifications using Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and AWS Lambda. This means you can automatically add new real-time and near-real-time NEXRAD data into a queue or trigger event-based processing if the data meets certain criteria, such as geographic location.

Visit our NEXRAD on AWS page for information on subscribing to these SNS topics and incorporating them into workflows. We’re excited to see what you do with this new capability!

Getting started with NEXRAD on AWS

In addition to these new tools, you can find tutorials from Unidata, The Climate Corporation, and CartoDB on our NEXRAD on AWS page to help you get started using NEXRAD on AWS. Unidata has also made the NEXRAD Level II archive data available via their THREDDS Data Server and you can also browse the archive contents via the AWS JavaScript S3 Explorer.

Educators, researchers, and students can also apply for free AWS credits to take advantage of the utility computing platform offered by AWS, along with public data sets such as NEXRAD on AWS. If you have a research project that could take advantage of NEXRAD on AWS, you can apply for an AWS Grant.

We’d love to feature more tools and stories. Tell us how you’re using the data via the NEXRAD on AWS page!

With a drastically changing technology landscape, Sue Gordon, Deputy Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), explained during the customer spotlight at AWS’s re:Invent conference how we must all adapt to execute our missions. In recent issues of this blog, we have heard from a nonprofit (Quorum), government-funded not-for-profit corporation in Canada (MPAC), and NGA rounds out the federal government customer segment from this event.

NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals and first responders. Sue Gordon’s perspective is that NGA “provides the content and context so the nation can know the truth, see beyond the horizon, and be able to act before events dictate.”

Is she speaking of spy satellites? Sure. But if NGA is going to fulfill its mandate to know the earth, show the way, and understand the world now and in the future, Gordon believes they are going to have to bring a lot more. NGA is in its 20th year and the mission is as vital as ever.

There is absolutely nothing about the mission that is not still valid today, but the conditions in which NGA must execute its mission have changed.

From the beginning

For most of their history, intelligence agencies have been a sturdy, strong (somewhat isolated) house on the prairie. They collected data and stored it in stovepipes. They dealt with issues that were essentially constant. Their customers were a fairly specific set, and although they communicated with each other, it was point-to-point in a very secure manner. But at the time of the attacks of September 11th, the world changed.

Everything was different; it was complex, and chaotic. Data was exploding around the world. And it came at a time where the intelligence community needed to know so much more.

The nature of NGA’s customers and their needs changed.  In order for NGA to be successful, it would require adaptation to the new landscape and movement away from the isolated model of years past.

For example, even the most fundamental element of NGA’s craft—geography—requires new thinking. Borders may look the same as they did in the atlases studied in school, but there is much more going on beyond that. Cultures, relationships, and networks are also vital to truly understanding geography. These microtrends help put what can be seen into the context of what people need to know.

Simply put, what got us here won’t get us there.

Using data

In late 2014 and early 2015, NGA played a behind-the-scenes role in addressing the Ebola crisis. NGA gave the world access to important geospatial data, which was leveraged by medics and international workers to help solve the problem. Since then, this type of information, which has expanded to include data focused on the Nepal earthquake among other data sets impacting the world, is now more routinely made available to the public. With source code and applications, you can use the NGA’s data as well as your own to make important discoveries.

NGA uses AWS and partners, by way of the cloud, to fill in knowledge gaps to fulfill its mission, which is often less secretive than that of other intelligence agencies. “It is key to what we must do, because we must succeed in the open,” Gordon said.

NGA needs a public-private partnership to make the most of the technology available. Industry brought them the cloud infrastructure, but NGA was able to test the technology and use it in innovative ways.

“Being in the government, we can’t pursue things blindly. We have to be sure,” Gordon said, “It is a matter of balance between speed and accuracy, crowdsource and pedigree, national security and civil liberties, classified and unclassified.”

NGA has a compelling mission, a sure need, insurmountable obstacles, and an incredible opportunity.

Learn how NGA adapted to fulfill its mission in this video.

As part of our commitment to our military, we had the opportunity to sit down with our three AWS Military fellows during their first few months at AWS (learn more about this program in our post here). Last week you read our Q&A blog with Lieutenant Colonel Maria Schneider, U.S. Army Acquisition Officer, as she talked about her experience within the Department of Defense (DoD), her goals for her time at AWS, and what she has learned so far.

Our next interview is with Captain James Thomas (JT), U.S. Airforce Communications Officer.

How did you get involved in this program? What attracted you to the AWS Military Fellowship?

JT: My career field within the Air Force led me to look into the slots available within the IT portion of the program that would place me with AWS. Coming from a career in the military, I was interested in how innovation happened on the commercial side of the fence. My goal was to take this experience with industry and bring it back to the DoD. I applied in May, found out in December, and in the summer I packed my bags in England and moved here to start with Amazon in September as my new duty station. I hope to capitalize on this experience and use it at my next assignment to shape DoD’s adoption of commercial cloud services. The DoD is going through an education time with cloud and small pockets have adopted. With my interest and knowledge gained, I hope to help alleviate roadblocks wherever my next assignment takes me.

What are your focus areas here at AWS? What are your focus areas within the DoD?

JT: During my time here, I am focusing on entire aspects of the AWS Cloud and how to operate and deploy. I am working to learn the exact security policies that are behind it, key concerns, and compliance and acquisition requirements. Mainly, I want to understand what is happening on this side so that when I go back on the other side of the fence, I am able to help realize the benefits of the cloud for the DoD.  Before I arrived at AWS, I dealt with data center management and different network enclaves in the DoD network, which connected over into cloud. Now I am learning the specific tools needed for the secure operations of a commercial cloud.

What are some lessons learned at AWS that you are able to bring back to your role in the DoD?

JT:  I am amazed by the pace of innovation, and that can’t be copied. Everyone thinks they can do some innovative things, but not everyone can at the speed and pace that is done here. This pace of innovation coupled with the management framework, leads to success. This is similar to the military construct I am used to, but there is a lack of micromanagement here, which breeds innovation.  We are given the freedom to get the work done. And looking at Amazon’s Leadership Principle of “Think Big,” I plan to bring this mentality back with me.

What military values are you able to transfer to industry?

JT: The Air Force core values are integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. These values ensure we deliver results, which is a key Leadership Principle at AWS. I hope to copy and paste this mentality, and continue to deliver results as best and as fast as we can.

Give an example of what has been your favorite part about your time at AWS?

JT: I enjoy learning about the technical set up and services, but my general excitement about working for AWS is that I am a part of something big, and I have the opportunity to contribute to something big. I see the benefits of this technology in the military every day, and I love being a part of it. I am inspired to do better work each day.

We are very appreciative for the fellows’ insights and for the time they took to share their experiences. Stay tuned for our third and final interview with Master Sergeant Kelly Butler, U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer, and more information about how to apply to become an AWS Military Fellow.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is committed to offering opportunities to servicemen and women. As part of this commitment, we created the AWS Military Fellowship exchange program as part of the larger program across the Department of Defense (DoD), designed to expose active duty military to AWS’s technology and Amazon’s leadership principles. The programs build a unique cadre of officers who understand not only the profession of arms, but also the nature of the strategic problems facing the DoD, and the organizational and operational opportunities made possible by revolutionary changes in information and other technologies. These officers will be at the forefront of transforming defense strategy, military forces, and the supporting infrastructure.

About the fellowship

For up to one year, our current three active duty military fellows are able to live day in and day out as employees of AWS. During their time at AWS, they are tasked with finding areas of specific interest to them and their military specialties.  They focus on these innovative areas of interest and at times, will reach out to their respective services during their tour with AWS— putting the uniform back on to explain to their community what they are seeing and doing within the commercial technology space to provide value to the DoD.

Value to industry and military

This program pays dividends to both the DoD and to industry. The DoD, as an institution, will be more capable of meeting future challenges because the officers coming from this program are familiar with innovation and transformation issues. And AWS is able to work alongside our military fellows to learn from them how we can better help the different branches of the military save money, innovate faster, and deliver capabilities that help achieve their mission.

This year’s AWS fellows include:

• Lieutenant Colonel (Promote-able) Maria Schneider (MS), U.S. Army Acquisition Officer
• Captain James Thomas (JT), U.S. Airforce Communications Officer
• Master Sergeant Kelly Butler (KB), U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer

We had the opportunity to sit down with these fellows during their first few months at AWS to talk about their experience within the DoD, how they got involved with this program, and what they plan to get out of their time at AWS.

Our first interview is with Lieutenant Colonel (Promote-able) Maria Schneider (MS), U.S. Army Acquisition Officer.

How did you get involved in this program? What attracted you to the AWS Military Fellowship?

MS: I was honored with being selected from this competitive board to participate in the Senior Service College (SSC) program. The SSC program offers a unique opportunity for members of the Army Acquisition Corps (AAC), military and civilians to gain advanced leadership training and experience specifically designed for senior leadership positions. As an Army Acquisition Officer, I selected the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellowship Program (SDCFP) as my top choice, in order to gain a better appreciation of how industry deals with change management and insertion of new innovation. I was looking for a company that supports the DoD mission, where I could identify the acquisition related challenges. Amazon was my top choice of the 14 participating civilian corporations. I have been intrigued with getting to look “behind the commercial curtain” to determine how Amazon fosters such an innovative culture, develops corporate strategies, develops/implements metrics that matter, institutionalizes the leadership principles into daily operations, and meets customer’s demands (more specifically DoD).

What are your focus areas here at AWS? What are your focus areas within the DoD?

MS: While at AWS, I am primarily focused on rotating through various teams in search of opportunities to gather innovative ideas and best practices that can translate over to the DoD. I also provide insight for the DoD sales team on acquisition processes, procedures, and programs that can continue to foster the business relationships between DoD and Amazon. Within the DoD, one of my duties is to serve as an independent observer for DoD Senior Executives focused on providing an unbiased viewpoint of acquisition-related challenges associated with the adoption of commercial cloud computing goods and services.

What are some lessons learned at AWS that you are able to bring back to your role in the DoD?

MS: Some lessons learned at AWS that I’ll be able to bring back to my role in the DoD as an Army Acquisition professional are: rethink the way we do business, reform the ways DoD communicates mission requirements with industry, remove the barriers to enable people to work collectively to develop innovative solutions, and restructure antiquated acquisition models.

What military values are you able to transfer to industry?

MS: It is my desire to demonstrate the Army’s seven core values (leadership, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage) in all of my engagements and interactions with industry, in order to ensure that continued support is provided to the program and peers alike in the future.  This program is instrumental to the success of the Secretary of Defense Honorable Ashton Carter’s “Force of the Future” initiative and National Security, since representing the values in all daily actions is key to mission success.

Give an example of what has been your favorite part about your time at AWS?

MS: Functioning as an integrated member of the AWS discussions with government on acquisition related challenges certainly provided a unique perspective on the challenges faced by industry in meeting DoD’s mission requirements and forced me to re-evaluate business processes followed previously.  I’m confident that these engagements and broadened perspective will make me a better acquisition professional and leader, which will translate to the delivery of improved goods and services to the supported Army units that will fall under my area of responsibility. On a personal note, one of my favorite memories will be the challenges faced daily during my morning routine—wondering what to wear, and how to take care of my long hair— that became at times a significant dilemma.   For 26 + years, this challenge was handled by the United States Army.  I definitely realized, I have some room for personal growth in this area, hence, my recent subscription to some fashion magazines.

We are so thankful for the fellows’ expertise and for the time they took to share their experiences. Stay tuned for more interviews from the other AWS Military Fellows.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce that we recently signed a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Addendum with the California Department of Justice (California DOJ).

We know that security is a top priority for our customers, especially those in law enforcement. To help law enforcement customers comply with FBI standards for criminal justice information (CJI), which includes biometric, identity history, person, organization, property, and case/incident history data, AWS signs CJIS security addenda at both state and local levels. These CJIS security addenda give our law enforcement customers the confidence that their data will pass CJIS-compliance audits and that their data is secure in the cloud.

This signed addendum enables local law enforcement agencies in California to run CJIS workloads in the cloud with assurance that they are compliant with CJIS standards. To enable extremely high security levels for our customers, AWS employs a robust set of security technologies and practices, including encryption and access control features that surpass the capabilities of all other providers. In fact, we have been recognized by top third-party analysts as the leader in cloud security.

Our functionality, security, and ability to quickly sign CJIS agreements demonstrates AWS’s strong commitment to meeting the needs of our justice and public safety customers.

California Department of Justice cloud use case

The California DOJ’s JusticeCloud enables the delivery of cloud services with robust security and faster time to delivery.

To avoid the need for every agency in California to go through the adjudication and audit process with every cloud service provider, the California DOJ has taken the lead on this effort statewide. This includes building service catalogs with cloud service partners so that local law enforcement agencies can access pre-approved architectures and services with a lightweight administrative process. California law enforcement agencies are responsible for architecting their solutions to comply with CJIS, and the California DOJ is establishing ways to assist law enforcement agencies in easily adopting cloud services. CJIS compliance hinges on governance, and this approach simplifies the process for local law enforcement agencies.

“The cloud is an essential part of our strategy to securely deliver innovative digital services to all law enforcement agencies across California. With the CJIS addendum, law enforcement agencies statewide can adopt a cloud-first approach, and benefit from the cloud’s agility, cost savings, and breadth of functionality,” said Adrian Farley, Chief Information Officer, California DOJ.

What makes the AWS Cloud secure?

Security is our top priority, and our cloud infrastructure has been architected to be the most flexible, automated, and secure computing environment available today.

Law enforcement agencies are taking advantage of our rich security automation tools for greater visibility to move faster and meet CJIS security requirements.

Examples of AWS security features include the ability to:

• Encrypt your data in three ways – server side in Amazon S3, store and manage the keys yourself with AWS CloudHSM, or use our one-click AWS Key Management Service (KMS). AWS also integrates key management across many different services and provides a way for you to audit all of the access and actions with your keys in Amazon CloudTrail, our API logging service.  No other provider can match these encryption and key management capabilities.
• Manage identity and access management at a very granular level, limiting privileges by individual, time, location, and which API calls they are able to make. We also offer identity federation, easy key rotation, capabilities for temporary credentials, and powerful tools for developing and testing for access policies across your environment. No other provider comes close to the power of our access management system.
• Provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define with Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). You can then easily record and analyze the details of all network traffic inside your VPC environment as well as network flows coming and going to and from other networks using VPC Flow Logs.
• Design and build security controls and streamline auditing from the start within the Security by Design (SbD) framework. Within SbD we provide specific packages for building workloads in an automated fashion with a Security-Focused Standardized Architecture, and customers can maintain compliance baselines automatically with Inspector and Config Rules.
• Use AWS Direct Connect to establish private connectivity between AWS and your data center, office, or colocation environment.
• Get access to hundreds of tools and features to help you to meet your security objectives such as dedicated hardware, multi-factor authentication, and granular access controls.
• Beyond the AWS platform itself, the AWS partner ecosystem of security-focused partners is by far the largest and most sophisticated in the world. Hundreds of those tools are conveniently available to customers in the AWS Marketplace.

Every state, county, and local agency is different, and with these services and tools, law enforcement agencies can begin leveraging AWS to architect a secure and compliant environment for their data today.

Solve the case for any use case

We work with a wide ecosystem of justice and public safety partners in the AWS Partner Network (APN), including Utility, DoubleHorn, Quicket Solutions, Haystax, Evolver, REAN Cloud, Unisys, Azavea, iCrimeFighter, GovQA, L3Capture.com and more. Our APN partners’ solutions support important law enforcement functions, including digital evidence management.

“BodyWorn™, our Generation 2 body-worn camera, requires a very robust and secure cloud-based storage system,” said Robert McKeeman, CEO of Utility. “Amazon’s cloud-based, CJIS- compliant cloud service makes managing digital video evidence much more flexible and cost-effective for our law enforcement customers.  We have a great working relationship with the Amazon team.”

In addition to digital evidence management, our partners also offer solutions for e-discovery, e-citation, secure image management, mobile forensics, crime forecasting, major risk event management, public records management, backup, archival, and disaster recovery.

For more information on partner solutions in justice and public safety, click here.

Helping you achieve your mission

We work with over 2,000 government agencies like City of McKinney, the State of Arizona, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on their mission-critical workloads that include sensitive data. Our goal is to help you achieve your mission and have the peace of mind that your data is secure. AWS has the expertise to help you comply and resources that were created with the needs of the law enforcement community in mind.

To learn more about how AWS is serving the justice and public safety community visit: https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/justice-and-public-safety/

Customers can streamline compliance from architecting a solution to preparing for an audit with AWS’s portfolio of compliance guides and programs:

• AWS CJIS Workbook
• AWS CJIS Whitepaper
• Security Templates
• AWS CJIS Workshop Series
• Partner Ecosystem – Justice & Public Safety Solutions

AWS is committed to serving the law enforcement community from the field to the courtroom by helping safeguard data to reduce and prevent crime.

This past summer, the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation hosted the first Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Hackathon. The goal of the hackathon was to bring together and introduce both non-GEOINT and GEOINT-savvy coders and data scientists to interesting problems requiring inventive coding solutions. In addition to enabling participation from the non-GEOINT coding world, the end result was a working code base that performs a specifically requested set of functions or provides answers as outputs.

Students competed along with professional developers and data scientists. The competitors were challenged to predict where Ebola outbreaks might occur and determine why certain areas of West Africa were not affected. The goal was to develop a solution that could be modified to a new set of conditions and be used by other teams.

Out of 30 participants, a student team named “Team Intern” took first place earning a $15,000 award and free admission to the GEOINT conference that occurred in Washington D.C. They developed a predictive analysis model that revealed a likely pathway for Ebola outbreaks. By using an open-source Python library, the team modeled the spread of disease as it’s carried by contagious people through a network of nodes and edges using network theory. Simply put, Team Intern’s library aimed to capture where sick people travel and why.

Problem

To begin, the team looked at what had been done, the data available, and what they could do to fix the problem within 46 hours.

With the spread of disease on the rise, the population of West Africa in danger, and limited hours, the team had to take in data regarding the fatality rate, immunity rate, average travel distance, transmission rate, as well as geo-referenced statistics to determine the virus movement. Then they developed a model that predicts where Ebola will spread and how many people it will affect based on how contagious people travel.

Since disease control measures at water ports and airports are required to prevent the spread of the disease, the only form of travel was by road. However, more data was created by the options available for each contagious person, such as whether they leave or stay home and where they travel— East, West, North, or South. And once they left home, it was assumed they would be more likely to go to highly populated areas near hospitals in cities, thereby infecting more people.

All of this data was used to create a network theory outlining who was susceptible, who was infected, who was recovered, and where they traveled.

Solution

Team Intern turned to AWS to create a model that employed multiple data sources to predict outbreaks and epidemics. The connections between the susceptible and the infected could chart the spread of the disease at each time stamp and how quickly it would spread based on where the contagious people traveled.

The probability density map mapping nodes and edges was able to predict the spread of disease and model the outbreak based on the algorithm created with the data processed.

Hear directly from Team Intern about the problem and their approach to solving it in this on-demand webinar. Watch the webinar here.

Team “Intern”- R. Blair Mason (U.S. Naval Academy ’16), Briana Neuberger (Rochester Institute of Technology ’16), Dan Simon Rochester Institute of Technology ’16 and Paul Warren (Stanford ’17).

Earlier this week you heard MPAC’s journey to the cloud from the stage at AWS re:Invent, and today we are excited to share with you Quorum’s story.

Think big data: everything political from bills, votes, tweets, letters, and more.

With an election year coming up, politics are on the center stage. Whether you vote red or blue, there is much more that goes on behind the scenes that is driving politics today.

All of these questions amount to data. Every hearing, every bill, every vote, every tweet creates more and more data. And all of this data can be analyzed to reveal telling trends that help inform politics and build legislative strategies. However, without the use of technology, a lot of this data is mined by hand, resulting in time loss and low productivity.

This frustration led to the creation of Quorum. Quorum is an online legislative strategy platform that provides legislative professionals access to the world’s most comprehensive database of legislative information, with quantitative insights and modern project management tools making it easier to track legislation, build support, and take action.

As a boot-strap, born in the cloud start up comprised of 10 employees, Quorum had big ambitions for their large amounts of data that had to be accessed quickly, easily, and at a low cost. So Quorum turned to the AWS Cloud.

Data first

Two years ago when this project began, there was no central application program interface (API) at either the federal or state level to collect this type of data. There was no ability to search and find out what people were saying on the floor or committee hearings. Quorum set out to solve this problem and create transparency and knowledge of political data.

The first step to their project was to find all of the relevant information and build the world’s most comprehensive database of political data. In order to do this, they built a centrally-managed, easily-searchable database.

For example, with Quorum, it is now possible to search all different press releases from all members of congress with ease and at a click of a button. No longer do you have to weed through stacks of paper or search across sites in different formats.

Realizing the benefits of technology, Quorum relied on AWS to give them the power and flexibility to get the data needed and to eventually analyze it quickly and comprehensively in real time. Once you have the access to data you can figure out what it means, and then use it to inform and expand your decisions.

Analytics second

Powered by AWS, Quorum is able to leverage compute power from the outset, so instead of just having access to the data, Quorum is able to give insight into political trends from the big data produced.

With all of the data collected, Quorum built a quantitative analytics layer on top of it. They built analytic tools and data set filters to find insights. Quorum’s algorithms process over 800 million data points to calculate hundreds of different statistics about each member of Congress’ legislative history.

Additionally, there are a number of tasks that can be automated using computer science. Quorum offers tools that enable users to automatically identify all changes between various versions of a bill, create legislative scorecards on votes, bills, and amendments, and rank all 435 Congressional districts by over 1,000 demographic statistics. Quorum also facilitates legislative tracking, allowing users to easily assign members of Congress to lists and keep track of notes and outreach to each of the 535 members.

By creating a comprehensive database of legislative information, Quorum helps congress benefit from modern technology and data. Watch this video to hear from Jonathan Marks, Cofounder of Quorum, and learn more about Quorum and the cloud.