In a country where natural calamities such as typhoons and earthquakes happen frequently, information gathering is considered a vital component so help can be deployed where it is needed the fastest.
At the recently-held AWS re:Invent 2022 in Las Vegas, the booth of AWS Disaster Response — with a hybrid Jeep 4×4 on display — caught my attention. Aside from it being a Jeep that can run on both fuel and battery, it is not an ordinary vehicle as it is equipped with Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology aimed at helping in times of disaster. The 4×4 vehicle is designed to power up to four (04) AWS compute-optimized AWS Snowball Edge devices that can handle AI-powered imagery and machine learning for emergency response workloads and can run AWS applications even if an Internet connection is not available. The setup can also be configured to provide 4G/5G connectivity if needed.
The AWS Disaster Response Action Team allows customers to focus on mission-critical functions, while AWS provisions critical data and applications, transports hardware to the base of operations, and implements deployable infrastructure based on customer needs. AWS enables disaster response organizations to access cloud services at the edge, even in the harshest conditions.
“Cloud technologies have the potential to revolutionize disaster response. Our mission is to help communities more efficiently prepare for and respond to disasters globally through our cloud technology. By workshopping common problems and innovating solutions, we are able to powerfully improve disaster response activities for our standby partners, from understanding the scale of a disaster to developing new communications tools, or locating missing people. These innovations translate into faster and more efficient response strategies to provide a positive impact to communities in need,” according to Mo Ramsey, Global Lead, Disaster and Humanitarian Affairs at AWS.
Ramsey added that AWS believes that they have the responsibility to give back to the world in a philanthropic way, through the use of technology. The AWS unit works with non-government organizations (NGOs) worldwide by supporting them on humanitarian or disaster response missions. The AWS Snowball devices are flight-ready and can be transported anywhere in the globe where the setup (less the vehicle) is needed.
“The AWS disaster response vehicle functions as a ‘rolling lab’ with the primary purpose of helping us innovate faster during our Field Test Exercises. The rolling lab transports the technology needed to support disasters on the ground, including Snowball Edge computing devices and connectivity gear that makes it possible to bring advanced analytics and other critical workloads into the field in remote environments and under harsh conditions. The disaster response vehicle enables the team to conduct disaster response activities from mapping to object detection and beyond, in completely disconnected environments, quickly out of the vehicle,” Ramsey said during a quick tour of the vehicle with the devices and technologies in it.
Partner NGOs request this kind of setup to help them establish Internet connectivity, produce imagery from aerial vehicles (drones, helicopters, or even fixed-wing aircraft), and other sorts of missions where the different AWS technologies will be most useful.
According to the AWS Disaster Response team representative, the technology has been deployed to the Philippines twice already in the past to support their partner NGOs during disaster relief missions.
“We have only begun to scratch the surface of the innovations that the cloud can offer in disaster and humanitarian crises. Our Field Test Exercises help us work through critical roadblocks with our standby partners. One example of this is the use of communications in the field. We are working together to help solve for an interoperable standard to connect organizations across disparate equipment and vendors to allow coordinated communications across all disaster response personnel and volunteers,” added Ramsey.