AWS Public Sector Blog
Tag: Amazon ECS
Bridging data silos to house and serve the homeless
Efforts to prevent and combat homelessness are limited by the lack of comprehensive data about people experiencing homelessness. This makes it difficult for states to identify trends and emerging needs to respond and make data-driven decisions about the effective deployment of resources. The cloud can help bridge information silos. Read on for examples of how states use the cloud to bridge data silos and better serve the homeless.
How artificial intelligence and Amazon Alexa are teaching students to write
Ecree, an AWS EdStart Member, was founded by educators who believed the way we teach students to write is broken. The volume of work a teacher is being asked to do means students don’t always get the necessary attention and feedback required to develop their writing skills. Ecree’s founding team set out to support teachers and students by creating the world’s first rules-based tool that assesses student writing in the same way a highly trained professor does, on-demand. The solution uses cloud technologies including machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and voice technology to help improve student writing.
A streamlined, mobile-first approach to service delivery for counties and states
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the health and financial strain in communities across the country. Before the pandemic hit, Wildfire, a state association for Community Action Agencies, was working with Prefix, an AWS Partner Network Technology Partner, to develop a cloud-based solution for utility and rental assistance. When the City of Phoenix requested they support the distribution of $20 million CARES Act funds, they shifted their resources and existing infrastructure and, in a matter of weeks, stood up a repeatable public-facing solution.
How the University of British Columbia uses the cloud to reduce sunflower genomic processing time and research costs with a data lake
The botany department at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the UBC Data Science Institute are working together to research the evolution and genetic makeup of sunflowers – a critical crop in addressing global food security.
Leveraging the cloud for rapid climate risk assessments
Four Twenty Seven builds tools and services that help bring climate data (sourced from government agencies and academic institutions) to public and private organizations so they can better understand their exposure to climate hazards and manage risk in their communities. Four Twenty Seven’s new on-demand scoring application allows users to enter an asset’s location and receive risk scores for each site in real-time.
Five best practices for building .NET on AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) knows how to run .NET applications, and provides .NET developers with resources for building, testing, deploying, and running their .NET applications. Watch our on-demand webinars to learn about migrating and building serverless or container-based apps on AWS. For .NET developers new to AWS, it is important to know about the tools, […]
Cancer Research UK finds freedom and culture change with AWS and the cloud
As nonprofits work toward their missions, resource efficiency is top of mind, so that as much of their budget as possible is dedicated to achieving their mission. Working with limited budgets, nonprofits and charities use the cloud to help them remain lean, scale their missions, and address their skills gaps. Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world’s largest independent cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through cancer research.
Solcast: Solar irradiance forecasting for the solar powered future
Solcast produces real-time, historical and forecast estimates of the available solar radiation resources around the globe. Altogether, this requires processing imagery from five geostationary weather satellites, which take snapshots of the Earth from space every 5-15 minutes. These images can be as fine as 1 kilometer in spatial resolution and are re-captured and transmitted as frequently as every five minutes – a large volume of data. A single third-generation weather satellite in orbit over the United States such as the GOES-16 generates nearly two terabytes (TB) of data each month.
Driving sustainability through youth engagement
Today, speakers at the 24th World Scout Jamboree (WSJ) will introduce nano, a new gamified app developed on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud that encourages youth around the world to adopt daily sustainability practices to help improve our planet. The Scouts are also launching #ScoutsRecycle, a campaign that leverages the nano app for sustainability. Through nano, scouts will be able to measure the impact of their efforts by calculating the CO2e emissions avoided through #ScoutsRecycle.
Develop and extract value from open data
In this blog post, we explore a use case for government organizations using the OpenStreetMap (OSM) dataset, a free, editable map of the world, created and maintained by volunteers and available for use with an open license. Using open source tools, we generate and render custom maps for a government’s digital property. By leveraging Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, and multi-tiered architectures, map tiles server can run in an efficient and highly available infrastructure.