Tag: open data

In 2017, a group of students at the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster embarked on an ambitious project: to build an Earth Observation Infrastructure on AWS that would support disaster preparedness for flooding situations in Europe. We asked Professor Remke about the project, how AWS was used, and his recommendations for similar projects in this Q&A.

As organizations increasingly rely on data to accomplish their goals, they are adding a new role in order to balance expertise in statistics, policy, management, leadership, and rapidly evolving technology: the chief data officer (CDO). Although individuals with the same set of responsibilities may hold many titles, there has been a rapid growth in the role of the CDO in recent years.

We are excited to announce the launch of the Registry of Open Data on AWS (RODA). With RODA, you can find and share data staged publicly for analysis on AWS. Search for datasets by keyword and tags for common types of data, such as genomic, satellite imagery, and transportation, on a simple web interface. Every dataset listed in RODA includes basic information about the data, how to access it on AWS, its license, a link to documentation, and contact information if you have questions. Many listings also include links to tutorials or applications that make use of the data.

The recent Winter Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, showcased a breakthrough Sundance documentary, Dying in Vein. Its filmmaker, Jenny Mackenzie, joined a panel of public health and technology leaders, including Dr. Bill Hazel, former Secretary of Health and Human Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Alex Chan, CEO of the Clinton Foundation Health Initiative, to discuss opiate and heroin addiction, which, as the film highlights, claims an average of 90 lives in the U.S. daily. A prevailing theme that emerged cast the opioid epidemic as an issue of public health – rather than one of criminal justice – and pressed the role of technology in mitigating its risks.

When the team at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wanted help addressing the nation’s opioid epidemic, they decided to do something simple – invite in the country’s brightest minds and give them API-enabled, up-to-date 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.

The United Nations (UN) has named 17 goals that will help boost sustainable development worldwide. Technology and cloud-based solutions will be a critical part of achieving the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs). DigitalGlobe, one of the world’s leading providers of high-resolution Earth imagery, data and analysis, with support from Amazon Web Services (AWS), has launched the GBDX for Sustainability Challenge. We are looking for passionate participants who can leverage machine learning and high-resolution satellite imagery for geospatial solutions that support these sustainable development goals, such as disaster response, food security, poverty elimination, and ending malaria, to name a few.

We strive to meet our customers not only where they are now, but also where they want to be in the future. This requires constant innovation and rapid development of public sector solutions each year. In 2017, this took the form of the AWS Secret Region, achieving DoD Impact Level 5, and making AWS Educate available to students ages 14 and older – just to name a few highlights.

The China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) satellites are the result of a cooperation agreement between Brazilian and Chinese space agencies (INPE and CAST, respectively) started in 1988. Since then, five satellites have launched (CBERS-1/2/2A/3/4).

AWS customers did amazing work with open data this year. Here are some of the stories from the year, including releases of massive new datasets, tutorials on how to work with data in the cloud, and stories of how people are using AWS to put open data to work.