March 2019 Top Blog Roundup

Spring has sprung in the U.S., global Summit season is abound, and the blog is reaching new milestones. Check out the stories our readers were most excited about last month.

1. City of Louisville Builds Open Source Traffic Tools using Data, Collaboration, and the Cloud

Cities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to do point-in-time traffic studies. Those studies assist cities in planning traffic signal timings and detours during street-closures. The City of Louisville, Kentucky, was paying every year for traffic studies and analysis and was getting static reports back. Instead, Louisville decided to use real-time congestion data freely available to governments through the Waze CCP (Connected Citizens Program). Combined with other information like built environment data and collision reports, Louisville could bring this together in the cloud for advanced analytics. Read more.

2. “Make Your Power”: Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), shares some of her advice for women working in the tech industry

Early in your career it is important to find individuals that you respect and admire to act as mentors. I still have mentors, and I still ask questions. You need to remember that the onus is on you to use your mentor’s time. You need to be prescriptive when it comes to asking for their help. Come to them with specific questions and give them perspective on where you need guidance. Approaching a mentor with a clear understanding of where you need guidance is key to respecting their time and getting the most of yours. Read more.

3. AWS Disaster Response Program: Aiding Disaster Relief

2018 saw many natural disasters devastating areas of the United States. To enable disaster response organizations’ access to cloud services at the edge, even in the harshest conditions, we announced the launch of the AWS Disaster Response Program (AWS DRP). Read more.

4. How Ride Data Helps Drive a Car Share Business

The British Columbia Automobile Association (BCAA) started the mobility revolution in B.C. over 100 years ago when a small group of British Columbians, passionate about cars and mobility, joined together to form an auto club. A century later, BCAA continues to help new generations get to where they need to go, and Evo is one way BCAA meets their changing mobility needs. Evo Car Share is Vancouver’s free-floating car sharing service offering a full fleet of 1,500 four-door, hybrid vehicles. Read more.

5. BlueDot Observatory – keeping an eye on our planet’s water resources

A guest post by Anze Zupanc, Data scientist, Sinergise

Managing water crises is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the decline in the available quality and quantity of fresh water is ranked as one of the top ten most serious societal risks by the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Risks report. Using satellite imagery available through the AWS Open Data Program and the AWS Cloud, BlueDot Observatory is establishing a global monitoring system for all at-risk water bodies. This monitoring reveals a sad truth – the total loss of water bodies is in the not-too-distant future. Read more.

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