Using the cloud to create a healthier and more sustainable future, one city at a time

C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. C40 empowers cities to collaborate effectively, share knowledge, and drive meaningful, measurable, and sustainable action on climate change. The current chair of C40 is mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti; and former mayor of New York City Michael R. Bloomberg serves as president of the Board of Directors. C40’s work is made possible by our three strategic funders: Bloomberg Philanthropies, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), and Realdania.

C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) connects 97 of the world’s largest cities to take bold climate action, leading the way towards a healthier and more sustainable future. Representing more than 700 million citizens and one quarter of the global economy, mayors of the C40 cities are committed to delivering on the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement at the local level as well as cleaning the air we breathe.

C40 delivers insights to help city governments understand how to deliver emission reductions and climate resilience. C40’s primary public platform for sharing this knowledge is the C40 Knowledge Hub, launched in 2019, to provide all interested cities with the knowledge and tools necessary to drive large-scale climate action. The Knowledge Hub is an online platform bringing together insights, practical experiences, and tested approaches for cities at every stage of their climate commitments.

A mission enabled by the cloud

As a global nonprofit, we depend on virtual, cloud-based solutions as the conduit between our audience of city decision makers and our growing library of information sourced internally from our content experts or externally from peer nonprofits, research institutes, and academics. The cloud helps us disseminate this content, makes our library of resources more accessible, and delivers data tools via an online platform.

One such resource is a suite of data visualization tools powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). This provides decision makers all over the world with quick insights from complex datasets. The Knowledge Hub has been visited by 126,000 users from over 200 countries and 9,500 municipalities. This global reach could not be possible without the cloud.

We chose AWS to house our data visualization applications based on its ability to meet our varied cloud storage needs. AWS is a flexible, cost-effective environment for collaborating with developers and managing system components as time-constrained administrators.

C40 is using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to provide the storage needed so the Qlik Sense data analytics software can be made available for external use. This allows city representatives the opportunity to engage fully with interactive data dashboards across a range of operating systems and environments, without the need to install or download software as an end user. AWS enables a fast, reliable, smooth experience for users of these dashboards.

By replacing multiple static spreadsheets with engaging, interactive data dashboards, C40 can create responsive dashboards that enable decisions based on key indicators and performance metrics. For example, a city can analyze its own air quality in comparison to regional peers. We highlight the important role cities play in combating climate change and creating a just, equitable, and sustainable future.

Member cities that provide C40 with data further benefit from the individualized analysis performed on their behalf as well as the aggregate data from all member cities. AWS enables us to create these analytical reports and identify fruitful connections where cities share their similar climate ambitions.

By using AWS and reducing our expenditure on cloud storage and computing, C40 can reallocate resources into urgent priorities, such as supporting global cities in the Race to Zero. The objective of the Race to Zero is to build momentum around the shift to a decarbonized economy ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2021. In this way, AWS helps C40 bring tools to those who share a vision for a better future.

Learn more about AWS for nonprofits, and learn about the AWS Nonprofit Credit Program and read more AWS Nonprofit Credit Program stories.

Figure 1: C40 Knowledge Hub – Adaptation Data Explorer, built on QlikSense and powered by AWS.