Category: Education

Geospatial data, including many climate and weather datasets, are often released by government and nonprofit organizations in compressed file formats such as the Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) or GRIdded Binary (GRIB). As the complexity and size of geospatial datasets continue to grow, it is more time- and cost-efficient to leave the files in one place, virtually query the data, and download only the subset that is needed locally. Unlike legacy file formats, the cloud-native Zarr format is designed for virtual and efficient access to compressed chunks of data saved in a central location such as HAQM S3. In this walkthrough, learn how to convert NetCDF datasets to Zarr using an HAQM SageMaker notebook and an AWS Fargate cluster and query the resulting Zarr store, reducing the time required for time series queries from minutes to seconds.

The AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program makes high-value, cloud-optimized datasets publicly available on AWS. Through this program, customers are making over 100PB of high-value, cloud-optimized data available for public use. As April 22 is Earth Day, the AWS Open Data team wanted to highlight some new datasets from our geospatial and environmental communities of practice, as well as the other new or updated datasets available now on the Registry of Open Data on AWS and also discoverable on AWS Data Exchange.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) recently released the 2023 report of the top 10 priorities of state chief information officers (CIOs) for strategies, management processes, and solutions. AWS works closely NASCIO and with state and local leaders across the US to develop solutions that address these top 10 needs. Explore these top 10 priorities and how state and local leaders can use AWS to support them.

In 2020, Meta introduced the Daylight Map Distribution, which combines OpenStreetMap (OSM) data with quality and consistency checks from Daylight mapping partners to create a no-cost, stable, and simple-to-use global map. This blog post provides a brief overview of OSM and Daylight followed by a step-by-step tutorial using five real-world examples. We combine the powerful query capabilities of HAQM Athena from with the feature-rich Daylight OSM data to demonstrate a typical OSM data analysis workflow.

With a growing focus on cybersecurity and available grant funding, many states are planning to protect state agencies, cities, counties, and schools. At the state and federal levels, programs are funded to support these efforts. State and local government (SLG) agencies now have procurement questions to ask and decisions to make to maximize governance and security, simplify vendor management, and accelerate the overall process within a heavily regulated procurement environment. Learn three important considerations for public sector procurement of cybersecurity solutions, as well as best practices from AWS for leveraging these new cybersecurity programs.

Many organizations within state and local government (SLG) and education must build digital environments and services that meet a variety of dynamic security and compliance considerations, such as StateRAMP and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Learn key top-level best practices from AWS for how to use AWS Security Services to meet the unique needs of education and SLG organizations.

Waterford.org is an early education nonprofit committed to advancing equity and excellence for young learners. Waterford.org provides personalized programs for learners from pre-kindergarten to second grade, and support services for families and educators so the adults in a child’s life can help them reach their full potential. To deliver these educational resources to families and children, Waterford.org uses AWS.

Moving a college’s or university’s on-premises IT infrastructure to the cloud involves a lot of change in organization, culture, and practice. However, in my experience as a former chief financial officer (CFO) in higher education, financial planning for cloud computing is often not attended to with as much diligence. Financial planning needs to be understood as a positive feature of digital transformation, even if it means changing how financial plans are developed and managed. In this blog post, learn four strategies to consider when deciding to migrate to the cloud.

The Think Big for Small Business (TBSB) program provides AWS Partners with access to AWS Partner Programs, financial incentives, and additional visibility with customers and AWS teams. Since March 2021, more than 500 partners from 41 countries have participated in the TBSB program, and have launched more than 1,200 opportunities with public sector customers. Learn how four TBSB partners supported public sector customers through their digital transformation in the TBSB program.

Data spaces can help break down these silos between industries and sectors. Data spaces facilitate a decentralized and secure data exchange across organizations and industries that come together to pool, access, process, and share data. They enable simple, secure, open standards-based, and interoperable data-sharing, while allowing for organizations to maintain full control over their data. Learn how data spaces support simple and secure data-sharing between organizations and sectors, current data space initiatives in Europe and beyond, and how to leverage a data space with AWS.