AWS Public Sector Blog

Smart Cities Challenge to deliver AWS infrastructure to improve public safety

Parsons Corporation, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) Advanced Consulting Partner, announced 10 semi-finalists in the first Parsons Smart Cities Challenge. The competition, titled Transforming Intersections, will award the winning city with a year of support and services to help increase mobility around cities and reduce the amount of time citizens spend at red lights.

The Parsons Smart Cities Challenge is powered by AWS. Parsons partners with AWS to provide a secure, reliable, fast, and affordable IT environment to host critical traffic management infrastructure and data analytics for airports, seaports, city and state transportation, and other critical assets operated by public sector agencies. Residents of these cities benefit from the innovation Parsons builds on AWS through improved safety by reducing traffic bottlenecks, accidents, and travel times. Parsons Intelligent Intersections helps cities and counties use existing data to provide automated traffic re-timing based on changing traffic patterns – enhancing mobility for the region.

“Great partners like Amazon Web Services allow us to deliver best-in-class solutions to our customers, quickly, anywhere in the world,” said Chuck Harrington, Parsons CEO. “By partnering with AWS, we are able to deploy infrastructure almost immediately, enabling Parsons to maintain the high-quality services our customers have come to expect.”

The applicants from around the world were selected by a non-partisan group of independent judges. The semi-finalists are:

  • Anne Arundel County, Maryland, U.S
  • Austin, Texas, U.S
  • Dubai Roads and Transport Authority, United Arab Emirates
  • Frontier MPO (Fort Smith), Arkansas, U.S
  • Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain
  • Mississauga (Ontario), Canada
  • Pasadena, California, U.S
  • RTC Southern Nevada, Nevada, U.S
  • Walnut Creek, California, U.S
  • Westminster, Colorado, U.S

The panel of judges will select a winner from the semi-finalists, to be announced in the spring of 2020. Please visit the Parsons Smart Cities Challenge website for more information.

Interested in smart cities? Visit the AWS State & Local Government website and read about the AWS City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge.