Tag: aws disaster response program

The Latin America and Caribbean region is the second most disaster-prone region in the world behind Asia and the Pacific Rim, with floods being the most common disaster in the region. There have been extraordinary levels of flooding around the world—but in Panama, flooding has become particularly challenging. The AWS Disaster Preparedness and Response Team and AWS Partner Grupo TX saw an opportunity to leverage the cloud to better understand and prepare for flooding and ultimately save lives.

While the 2023 hurricane season kicks off June 1, the reality is that AWS is working to help organizations and communities respond to hurricanes long before a storm forms. Throughout the year, AWS Disaster Response develops and tests new innovations that utilize cloud technology to enable more efficient disaster response capabilities for our customers and relief organizations.

On September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida. At the request of standby organizations Help.NGO and Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC), the AWS Disaster Preparedness and Response team assisted with response operations across a variety of functions in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.

At Amazon, we are committed to providing immediate relief and response to global communities impacted by natural disasters. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Disaster Response team plays an important role in this response, and the team has supported customers worldwide in the wake of hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and disease outbreaks including COVID-19. We help by bringing our operational and logistics expertise, as well as cloud technology to support our customers and our communities when and where they need it most, working closely with organizations like the American Red Cross.

When Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm, struck the Bahamas on September 1, 2019, first responders and aid organizations knew the damage would be significant. Dorian set the record for worst natural disaster to strike the Bahamas and became one of the two most powerful storms to make landfall from the Atlantic Ocean. Organizations standing ready to assist knew they needed innovative solutions to solve some of the more complex problems facing the island’s recovery.

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). he AWS DRP team focuses on building strategic relationships with governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO), nonprofit organizations (NPO), and educational institutions focusing on disaster response. Additionally, the AWS DRP is developing a capability to deploy technical AWS staff during disasters and directly aid disaster-responding organizations in leveraging AWS technology called the AWS Disaster Response Action Team (AWS DRT).

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) is a worldwide organization for law enforcement leadership to communicate new ideas, share experiences, disseminate information, and build relationships with other law enforcement entities. This year’s conference included sessions on trends in the law enforcement environment, new ideas, technology, and real-world applications. Here are some of the topics that AWS and our network of partners and solutions providers are working on to improve with law enforcement.

With Hurricane Florence heading for the east coast of the United States, home to many of our U.S. federal government customers, Jeff Barr is sharing some important reminders on how AWS takes extensive precautions to help ensure AWS will remain operational and what customers can do to be ready to weather the storm. From availability zones and contingency planning to data transfer and disaster response, learn about disaster preparedness in Jeff’s blog post.

IMAGINE: A Better World, a Global Nonprofit Conference, brought together hundreds of nonprofits from around the world for a unique, interactive learning experience. Attendees got a look at innovative ideas and proven approaches, delivered across a variety of tracks and topic areas. Check out five takeaways from the event below.

Updated June 2021 with additional resources. Due to common hardware and software failures, human errors, and natural phenomena, disasters are inevitable, but IT infrastructure loss shouldn’t be. With the AWS cloud, you can rapidly recover mission-critical systems while optimizing your disaster recovery (DR) budget. Thousands of public sector customers, like St Luke’s Anglican School in […]