Category: Sustainability

The Busan Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) teamed up with the World Food Programme (WFP), the Busan IT Promotion Agency, and technology startup Nuvilab to use cloud technology to address food waste in South Korea. Using Amazon’s “Working Backwards” approach with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data lake solutions on AWS, the team developed Zero Waste Zero Hunger (ZWZH), a program that uses artificial intelligence AI to provide data about food consumption.

Earlier this year, AWS launched the 2022 Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) Global Hackathon, part of a new collaboration with the International Research Centre in Artificial Intelligence, under the auspices of UNESCO. Participants were asked to use their creativity, intelligence, and technical skills to build sustainability solutions using data from ASDI on Amazon SageMaker Studio Lab, or any AWS Cloud services, to build solutions that support one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the United Nations (UN). Learn more about the winning projects.

With the launch of the new AWS Middle East (UAE) Region, AWS is releasing an Economic Impact Study that estimates that the new infrastructure region will support an average of 5,984 full-time jobs annually in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the next 15 years through investments of AED 20.1 billion (US $5 billion). The study provides an overview of existing and planned AWS infrastructure investments in UAE, and the economic benefits AWS investments create for the UAE economy. Read on for key insights from the AWS Middle East (UAE) Region Economic Impact Study.

As consumption of materials continues to increase and competition for natural resources grows, building sustainable and resilient infrastructure is crucial in the fight against climate change. This is why AWS is launching the next AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator cohort with a focus on infrastructure. The program empowers startups and leadership in the space to define, grow, and scale the cutting-edge solutions needed to solve today’s biggest infrastructure challenges. 

On Wednesday, August 31, Max Peterson, vice president of worldwide public sector at AWS, delivered the keynote address at the AWS Summit Canberra. Max shared regional announcements and local stories of how public sector customers are using the cloud to transform citizen services, innovate in healthcare, improve sustainability, and more. Two customer speakers joined the stage to share how AWS helps their organizations support their mission success and reimagine what’s possible. What’d you miss at the AWS Summit Canberra keynote?

The cloud offers transformative solutions to address sustainability challenges, enabling organizations to increase productivity, efficiency, and cost savings, as well as reduce emissions and waste. The cloud also enables data analytics and research at scale, allowing us to better understand and track key climate metrics required for fighting climate change. From smart devices that track water and energy consumption, to machine learning and artificial intelligence to support sustainable farming, organizations across the globe are using AWS to meet their sustainability goals.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are critical tools being used in healthcare research, autonomous applications, predictive maintenance, and also a key tool used to advance sustainability solutions. However, to use AI and ML to solve sustainability problems, innovators need specific datasets that are prepared for analysis and training of the models. To help create and accelerate sustainability solutions, the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) today announced easier identification of sustainability datasets with integration in AWS Data Exchange and the launch of a sustainability hackathon.

Can you see sounds? Using open data, you can. To celebrate this year’s World Oceans Day, an artist and sustainability application architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS), created an artwork titled Can You See the Sound of the Ocean. To create the art, she drew inspiration from the Pacific Ocean Sound Recordings from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), available through the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI). Learn more about the dataset and the art work.

With increasing pressure from climate change, loss of biodiversity, and demand for natural resources from already stressed ecosystems, it has become essential to understand and address environmental changes by making sustainable land use decisions with the latest and most accurate data. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), AWS invited Joe Sexton, chief scientist and co-founder of terraPulse, to share how AWS technologies and open data are supporting terraPulse’s efforts to provide accurate and up-to-date information on the world’s changing ecosystems.

On Tuesday, May 24, Max Peterson, vice president of worldwide public sector at AWS, took the keynote stage at AWS Summit Washington, DC to share announcements, news, and stories of how our public sector customers are leveraging the cloud to deliver mission-critical outcomes. Three customer speakers joined him to share how they’re using AWS to get the agility, resilience, and security needed to keep pushing boundaries and driving impact.