Category: Open Source

Efforts to prevent and combat homelessness are limited by the lack of comprehensive data about people experiencing homelessness. This makes it difficult for states to identify trends and emerging needs to respond and make data-driven decisions about the effective deployment of resources. The cloud can help bridge information silos. Read on for examples of how states use the cloud to bridge data silos and better serve the homeless.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It engages in large-scale Earth system science research projects in collaboration with the broader university community. NCAR hosts visitors from around the world, develops community models including the Community Earth System Model and the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, and maintains supercomputers, observational systems, and aircraft to support further study on the how the planet works. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, we invited Dr. David John Gagne, machine learning (ML) scientist at NCAR, to share how open data and machine learning on AWS are impacting the way we predict and understand extreme weather.

Governments are sharing their technology solutions with other governments through open source tools. These tools are helping state, local, and federal governments respond quicker, and at the scale needed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, one of the challenges governments face is finding out what open source tools are available. To help public sector customers use open source tools better, AWS launched Open Government Solutions, which aggregates open source projects and assets from public sector entities around the globe for governments at all levels to find, adapt, and reuse. During a panel conversation around the launch, government leaders outlined five key reasons why governments are choosing open source technologies to deliver citizen services.

As we continue to work with public sector bodies around the world, AWS understands how valuable open source software and development communities are at this time. To accelerate the combined global response to COVID-19, we gathered examples of third-party open code, tools, and standards that reformers in the public sector can immediately use. We’ve included these in a new resource now available in Open Government Solutions.

Cloud-based technology is supporting healthcare organisations and governments in response to the evolving COVID-19 situation. Healthcare providers and professionals, governments, and patients around the world are facing an unprecedented challenge. Here are some of the ways that these health-focused organisations use cloud-based technology to help improve patient services and outcomes.

The Smithsonian Institution announced the availability of more than 2.8 million two- and three-dimensional images and files through the Smithsonian Open Access Initiative. With this initiative, anyone with an internet connection has access to high-resolution media files, the accompanying metadata, and research from the Smithsonian Institution’s 19 museums, nine research centers, and zoo. This Smithsonian dataset is the largest museum collection released to date.

According to a survey of attendees at the AWS DC Public Sector Summit in 2019, 74% of government IT professionals believe their agencies hold onto data centers longer than they should. Monolithic methods of deployment impact speed, performance, and cost. With microservices, customers can break their monoliths into smaller business units, making it easier to migrate and manage systems in the cloud. This post outlines how customers can migrate from on-premises data centers to the cloud and break away from monolithic methods of deployment using microservices and containers.

What if someone in a hospital room or public train station suddenly falls due to a stroke or other health issue? An automated monitoring system like AWS DeepLens, a deep learning-enabled video camera for developers, could detect such falls and contact emergency services in a timely manner. Using AWS DeepLens, I created a solution.

To help solve a few challenges I faced with my family, including the need to track the location of a child, I needed a serverless global positioning system (GPS) monitoring solution. Commercial geographic monitoring GPS solutions are not cost-effective because of the cost of digital map licenses from third parties and running servers around the clock. Existing GPS systems work with proprietary GPS devices that lock-in the users’ vendors’ devices. My solution? Build my own serverless GPS monitoring and alerting solution.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) knows how to run .NET applications, and provides .NET developers with resources for building, testing, deploying, and running their .NET applications. Watch our on-demand webinars to learn about migrating and building serverless or container-based apps on AWS. For .NET developers new to AWS, it is important to know about the tools, […]