AWS Public Sector Blog

Tag: ASDI

Transforming animal conservation with open data and more on AWS

Open data is helping researchers and nonprofit conservationists protect vulnerable species around the world. In celebration of Earth Day, we are shining a spotlight on two sustainability stories from the AWS Fix This podcast from AWS, a podcast exploring the ways people use technology to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Predicting global biodiversity patterns in Costa Rica with ecosystem modeling on AWS

As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), AWS invited Rafael Monge Vargas, director of the National Center of GeoEnvironmental Information (CENIGA) at the Costa Rica’s Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), to share how his team is helping advance conservation and economic development in Costa Rica and how they utilize ASDI and AWS to support these efforts.

Supporting our nonprofit customers through change and transformation

At AWS, we know these are challenging times and we remain committed to supporting nonprofits. This blog post outlines a sampling of programs and resources for nonprofits, including grants and credits, open data access, cloud training, educational events, and more, designed to enable organizations of all sizes to overcome barriers to technology adoption, while enhancing the scale, performance, and capabilities of mission operations.

Bringing world-class satellite imagery to smallholder farmers with open data

As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), AWS invited Nils Helset, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of DigiFarm, to share how AWS Cloud technology and open data support DigiFarm’s efforts in precision farming to make agricultural practices more sustainable and efficient.

How African leaders use open data to fight deforestation and illegal mining

In Africa, scientific data is critical to helping the nation’s leaders tackle issues like water scarcity and climate change. A collaboration between nonprofit Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) and the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) is helping them access the data they need. DE Africa operates a free and user-friendly Earth observation (EO) data service that provides African policymakers with insights into a range of challenges, from natural resource management to the impacts of climate change. The service has already helped Ghanaian officials identify and tackle illegal mining, and provided decision-ready insights on flooding and drought in Tanzania and Nigeria.

AWS hosts new open dataset to help businesses identify climate finance risks and investments

Companies and asset managers looking to protect their financial investments from climate change-related risks, and invest in more sustainable solutions, can now access a new dataset on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud to help inform their decision making. Amazon announced that the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) dataset is now available and free for anyone to access in the cloud. The dataset includes key reference information that supports clear and unique identification of legal entities participating in financial transactions, and each LEI contains information about an entity’s ownership structure, including ‘who is who’ and ‘who owns whom’.

How open data from weather radar helps scientists improve environmental understanding

Weather radars see more than just the weather: they see smoke from fires, meteors, birds, mayflies, and almost anything else in the atmosphere. This makes weather radars an invaluable tool for scientists seeking to further the understanding of atmospheric processes and anything else that happens to be flying through the radar’s field of view. The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) seeks to accelerate sustainability-related innovation and research by helping to minimizing the cost and time required to store, acquire, and analyze large weather and climate datasets.

How the cloud is helping us better understand and manage the oceans

The world’s waters are largely unknown, with vast areas still unmapped. To protect and preserve the oceans, we need to extensively understand its systems, and data is at the core of that process. The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) is committed to enabling better access to the foundational data that can help researchers, businesses, and policy-makers better monitor and manage the ocean’s valuable resources.

Open data on AWS supports sustainable agricultural practices and crop optimization

With a rapidly growing population, the world is increasingly dependent on the ability to develop and maintain sustainable agriculture and healthy environments. Learn how BASF Digital Farming is leveraging both National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather data hosted on AWS, and commercial weather data, to develop digital solutions to help farmers effectively monitor and manage their fields, and help drive farm sustainability.

close up of laptop showing tracking of sharks via OCEARCH along the US Carolina coastline

Assessing the ocean’s health by monitoring shark populations

OCEARCH is a data-centric organization built to help scientists collect previously unattainable data about the ocean. Their mission is to accelerate the ocean’s return to balance and abundance, through innovation in scientific research, education, outreach, and policy, using unique collaborations of individuals and organizations in the US and abroad. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), we invited Fernanda Ubatuba, president and COO at OCEARCH, to share how her organization is making strides in helping ocean conservation and how AWS is supporting her mission.