Iowa City, Va. Beach and Tulsa Among Cloud Innovation Challenge Winners
Connecting state and local government leaders
Amazon Web Services’ “City on a Cloud” competition recognized 15 U.S.-based innovators among 19 awardees.
Iowa City, Iowa, which uses the cloud-hosted platform Lattice to identify “high utilizers” of homeless services and keep them out of jail or the hospital, received a 2017 Amazon Web Services City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge award Wednesday for its work.
The city was one of two small to midsize contenders to win the Dream Big award along with Marmion Academy’s engineering center, hailed as a “prototype for business and education STEM collaboration,” and among 17 other winners across three categories. Best Practices and Partners in Innovation are the other two categories.
All winners are AWS customers pushing the cloud envelope in their delivery of cloud services.
“This year’s City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge produced inspiring applications from cities, police departments, school districts, and our partners that use real-time data analytics, IoT services, and open data projects, all on the AWS Cloud,” Teresa Carlson, AWS worldwide public sector vice president, said in the announcement. “AWS is proud to recognize this year’s winners and showcase the innovation to improve our roads, provide digital learning to all students, and benefit first responders.”
Iowa City won $25,000 in AWS promotional credits along with its award to further its data-driven justice initiative, but prizes varied based on each jurisdiction’s size.
Here’s a sampling of other winners:
Best Practices
- Virginia Beach, Virginia for using StormSense analytics to predict and mitigate coastal flooding
- The Lawrence, Indiana Police Department’s deployment of BodyWorn, so video and audio body camera recordings are stored instantly and securely
Dream Big
- Tulsa Public Schools’ construction of a recommendation engine to improve students’ academic outcomes
Partners in Innovation
- France-based Anthemis Technologies creation of the “Help Me” beacon, notifying firefighters of locations, injuries, home access codes and medical histories during calls for service
Fifteen of the winners were U.S.-based, and you can read about them all here.
Dave Nyczepir is a News Editor at Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Washington, D.C.
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