AWS Public Sector Blog

Tag: big data

Using big data to help governments make better policy decisions

In Europe, government agencies and policy makers see the value in using new technology to unlock digital transformation and deliver better, more innovative citizen services. Using data for statistics initiatives, including open data, can help researchers produce innovative products and tools, including visualisation, to inform government officials ahead of making policy decisions that impact their citizens. When it comes to big data, policy makers need to collaborate with researchers to address issues and challenges in using these new data sources. To work toward this goal, Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, hosted its bi-annual European Big Data Hackathon.

Hurricane imagery acquired by NOAA RSD

Open data helps recovery in the aftermath of devastating weather events

Severe and extreme weather events not only wreak havoc on lives, property and the economy, but the extent of the destruction and devastation left behind can be difficult to map and quantify. Having high resolution imagery of areas devastated by weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and etc.) helps to characterize impacts, formulate needed recovery and response activities, support emergency managers in saving lives, and restart the flow of commerce. NOAA’s data plays a critical role in this process. As part of ASDI, we invited Jena Kent from NOAA’s Big Data Program to share how AWS is helping with disaster response by providing access to aerial data and imagery through open data initiatives.

BDP now supports securing, monitoring, and reporting on AWS GovCloud (US)

Enlighten IT Consulting, an AWS Managed Service Partner, is the prime integrator for the Department of Defense (DoD) Big Data Platform (BDP). BDP is a fully accredited government-owned platform used for storing, querying, and analyzing cyber data that runs at petabyte scale in AWS GovCloud (US). The BDP has been adopted by multiple defense and federal civilian agencies as the primary security information event management solution (SIEM) due to its ability to support petabyte-scale data ingest, processing, storage, and visualization without the burden of licensing cost or lock-in.

Analytics Without Limits: FINRA’s Scalable and Secure Big Data Architecture – Part 1

A guest post by John Brady, CISSP, VP Cyber Security/CISO, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) oversees more than 3,900 securities firms with approximately 640,000 brokers. Every day, we watch over nearly 6 billion shares traded in U.S. equities markets—using technology powerful enough to help detect fraud, abuse, and insider trading. In […]

Amazon Web Services and the National Science Foundation Spur Innovation in Big Data Research

The AWS Research Initiative (ARI) brings Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) together to spur innovation in Big Data research. Under the program on Critical Techniques, Technologies and Methodologies for Advancing Foundations and Applications of Big Data Sciences and Engineering (BIGDATA) a total of $26.5 million will be funded by NSF […]

The Art of the Possible: the Power of Data and Analytics in Education

A guest post by Darren Catalano, CEO of HelioCampus and former vice president of analytics at University of Maryland University College (UMUC).   Higher Education is at a tipping point. External factors, including an increased focus on student success and decreased revenue from previously reliable sources, are putting more pressure on institutions to become more […]

20x: More Mission for the Money at UMUC

After hearing from our nonprofit and government customers over the last month (NGA, Quorum, and MPAC), we want to share a story from the education world explaining how University of Maryland University College (UMUC) was able to save $500,000 annually and see 20x performance increase by building a new analytics platform using Amazon Redshift. UMUC’s […]