Tag: public sector

Even before the pandemic, many people were rent burdened, with a quarter of renters paying more than half their income on rent. US Congress approved two bills containing $45 billion for emergency rental assistance programs (ERAP) that states and local governments can use to support people in need. Distributing these funds quickly and efficiently requires local agencies to rapidly design and deploy new engagement models, programs, and workflows that are easy to use, that can quickly scale up to meet demand, and are flexible enough to adjust to changes in federal and local requirements. Learn how these AWS customers and partners are leveraging the cloud to quickly launch and distribute benefit assistance programs like emergency rental assistance.

Nonprofits can leverage the cloud to reduce the burden associated with their fundraising activities. With machine learning (ML), nonprofits can identify individuals who are more likely to engage and donate to their cause to support their mission. Read more to learn exactly how you can put these solutions into action and leverage ML to help your nonprofit with fundraising efforts. In this post, discover how to use Amazon Personalize to build a ML model that supports a wide-range of personalization experiences—without prior machine learning experience.

Alzheimer’s, a progressive brain disease that gradually deteriorates memories and thinking skills, is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, according to nonprofit UsAgainstAlzheimer’s (UsA2). To help address the immense need for brain health information and insights, UsA2 recently launched BrainGuide working with AWS and Biogen. BrainGuide is a first-of-its-kind platform that empowers people with knowledge and resources to take the best next steps in managing their own or a loved one’s brain health.

Innovators in the transportation sector can seek additional sources of funding to help advance projects to improve safety, efficiency, system performance, and infrastructure. The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) offers state and local government funding opportunities through discretionary grant programs that encourage transportation agencies to think big. Several AWS customers, including the Contra Costa Transportation Authority and the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), successfully won these highly competitive USDOT grants. Learn from the collaborators on these projects, including Haile, Mark Haselkorn, director of the University of Washington’s Center for Collaborative Systems for Safety, Security, and Regional Resilience (CoSSaR), and Jimmy Kim, head of business development for smart communities, transportation, and mobility at Verizon, as they share their suggestions for crafting a successful application.

What if we were to democratize access to data and compute so that anyone, anywhere in the world could contribute to climate science? The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) seeks to accelerate sustainability research and innovation by minimizing the cost and time required to acquire and analyze large sustainability datasets. ASDI supports innovators and researchers with the data, tools, and technical expertise they need to advance sustainability initiatives. ASDI is committed to making climate-relevant data easier to access and analyze. ASDI’s growing data catalog comprises petabytes of open data.

Today, Amazon announced that it is now hosting petabytes of data from the largest and most updated climate simulation dataset in the world. Through two cloud grants from the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) to the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), Amazon is enabling climate researchers worldwide to access and analyze the dataset used for the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC-AR6) on the AWS Cloud. The report—scheduled to be published in May 2022—provides policymakers worldwide with the latest assessment of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The climate simulation dataset, also known as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data archive, traditionally hosted and distributed through the ESGF servers, aggregates the climate models created across approximately 30 working groups and 1,000 researchers working on IPCC-AR6.

The Urban Analytics Lab at the National University of Singapore (NUS) spearheads research in geospatial data analysis and 3D city modelling. The lab’s work underpins the development of smart cities and provides scientists, architects, urban planners, and real estate developers with data insights. These insights help parties make informed decisions about projects ranging from energy modelling to urban farming. To meet rising global demand for its data analytics and planning tools, Urban Analytics Lab turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Data has become a strategic asset. With the right tools, data becomes predictive and makes us agile. Using data-led migrations and advanced data analytics solutions, AWS Partners create repeatable and scalable solutions that provide increased operational efficiencies and profitability for companies, agencies, and governments. The three steps to gaining the full value of data are: migrate data to the cloud data lake, set up an analytics engine, and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including ML and deep learning.

According to FAIR Health and the American Medical Association, telehealth use saw a nearly 3000% growth from pre-pandemic to during the pandemic. These services make virtual, real-time interactions between patient and provider possible. However, the great promise of telehealth has highlighted existing roadblocks that some face when trying to access healthcare in this country. The National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved (NHIT) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization on a mission to provide equitable access to health technologies and to make sure that these technologies address the needs of underserved communities and communities of color. Since its founding in 2008, NHIT has worked to advance health equity and economic viability on issues such as broadband access, electronic health records, precision medicine, consumer health applications and disaster resiliency.

Nonprofits and education institutions of all sizes rely on large amounts of data to serve their stakeholders, programs, and governance. For many organizations, the first step in a technology transformation begins with centralizing data that is siloed across a variety of mission critical systems. In support of these goals, Salesforce.org and Amazon Web Service (AWS) are working together to help nonprofits and education institutions derive actionable insights from their data.