Preface

This book will provide a comprehensive overview of geospatial data and analytics in the cloud. You will learn how to optimize your geospatial data asset by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. You will be shown examples and exercises depicting how to ingest and manage geospatial data from a variety of sources using AWS services like Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Athena. The concepts and patterns outlined in this book can help to build a new Geographic Information System (GIS) for you and your organization. It will also be helpful to identify areas of an existing GIS that are candidates for migration to or modernization in the AWS cloud.

Each chapter will give you a basic understanding about what you can do in the cloud for a specific technical area and point you in the right direction for additional resources. The earlier chapters are general and read somewhat like a narrative. Later chapters have lab exercises and samples with prescriptive steps to walk you through how to do specific tasks. We know that everyone learns differently and sometimes it is just about knowing enough to start asking the right questions. Frank Lloyd Wright said that an expert is someone who has “stopped thinking because he ‘knows.’ If you are a cloud-native geospatial expert much of this book’s content will be a refresher, but I invite you to read it cover to cover and you’ll find some new topics and ideas. Warren Berger realized “As expertise loses its ‘shelf life,’ it also loses some of its value” and the AWS cloud has brought that to GIS. If you knew everything there was about creating highly available web mapping services 10 years ago, most of that expertise is due for a reboot.

We hope you appreciate the years of expertise, experimentation, failures, and successes that went into the creation of this book. The geospatial ecosphere on AWS is continually evolving, and future revisions of this title will include sections to cover new services and features that will make your life easier. Using the AWS cloud for geospatial data management and analysis provides substantial benefits over an on-premises deployment. As you reflect on your GIS environment and identify areas for improvement, we hope this book serves as a trusted guide to inspire you to build and explore. We love all forms of feedback, so please reach out if there are topics or use cases that would be particularly helpful for you and your organization.