Tag: open data

To help countries realize the potential of Earth observations for sustainable development, we are teaming with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to provide $1.5 million worth of cloud services for projects that improve understanding of our planet. Eligible government agencies and research institutions can apply for up to $100,000 of AWS Promotional Credits to build Earth observations applications that support environmental and development goals, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

This week, the bipartisan Open, Permanent, Electronic, and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act officially became law in the United States, requiring that non-sensitive data produced by US federal agencies be made publicly available in non-propriety and machine-readable formats by default. We have long supported this legislative proposal since it was first introduced in 2016, and commend both the Congressional leaders and the Administration for their commitment to making open data a priority.

Enterprises, nonprofits, and startups around the globe are using the cloud to accelerate innovation in geospatial workflows to respond to natural disasters, fuel precision agriculture, plan city infrastructure, provide weather forecasts, and drive a myriad of other purposes. We convened an Earth on AWS session at the 2018 ESA Φ-week event, with presentations and discussions from experts showing how they’re using the AWS Cloud to unlock value from geospatial data and learn more about our world.

Happy New Year! As we start off 2019, we wanted to share the most popular posts from 2018. With a focus on developing our next-generation of cloud practitioners to best practices to get started in your cloud environment, read the top ten blog posts from the AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofit blog.

The SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification aims to standardize the way geospatial assets are exposed online and queried. The China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellites (CBERS) are the result of a cooperation agreement between Brazilian and Chinese space agencies (INPE and CAST, respectively), which started in 1988. Since then, five satellites were launched (CBERS-1/2/2A/3/4). The mission generates images from Earth with characteristics similar to USGS’ Landsat and ESA’s Sentinel-2 missions. In 2004, INPE announced that all CBERS-2 images would be available at no charge to the public. It was the first time this distribution model was used for medium-resolution satellite imagery. Now, this model is used for all CBERS satellite images.

The AWS Institute interviewed Natalie Evans Harris, co-founder and CEO of BrightHive and former senior policy advisor to the US Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration. Harris founded the Data Cabinet, a federal data science community of practice with over 200 active members across more than 40 federal agencies, co-led a cohort of federal, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations to develop data-driven tools through the Opportunity Project, and established the Open Skills Community through the Workforce Data Initiative. She also led an analytics development center for the National Security Agency (NSA) that served as the foundation for NSA’s Enterprise Data Science Development program and became a model for other intelligence community agencies.

Amazon today announced the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative to promote sustainability research, innovation, and problem solving by making key data easily accessible and even more widely available. The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative leverages Amazon Web Services’ technology and scalable infrastructure to stage, analyze, and distribute data, and is a joint effort between the AWS Open Data and Amazon Sustainability teams.

Coastal communities in the Southern United States are frequently impacted by flooding from storm surge, rain, and tides. To help monitor and enhance flood emergency preparedness, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at the College of William & Mary has been providing tidal forecasts since 2012 for a dozen locations in the lower Chesapeake Bay through its VIMS TideWatch Network. To expand and enhance these capabilities along Virginia’s seaside Eastern Shore, VIMS developed StormSense. The StormSense project works closely with coastal local governments leveraging a network of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled water level sensors, VIMS’s hydrodynamic flood modeling and forecasting capabilities, and the VIMS TideWatch Network to improve flood resilience in the region.

Sharing data requires more than just making it available for download or creating an API to access it. In many ways, sharing data is similar to shipping a software product. Just like software; data is made up of digital information; it requires documentation; it will be used by groups of users who may require support; and it may become vital to those users’ work. Another common characteristic of software is that it often gets updated over time as software developers learn from their users and adapt to new technologies.

GREENSPIN is a startup company from Würzburg, Germany, that works in the area of data analytics for better agriculture. In this blog post, Dr. Sebastian Fritsch tells us how GREENSPIN is using Earth Observation data available via the Registry of Open Data on AWS to improve agricultural practices. Check out the Q&A with Dr. Sebastian Fritsch from GREENSPIN.