Amazon Web Services celebrates the first anniversary of the opening of the AWS region in Spain. And it does so by advancing sustainability as Kevin Miller, global vice president of data centers at Amazon Web Services (AWS), advanced in a recent interview with the Economist
In addition to its commitment to renewable energies, the company has also focused on water and its consumption in order to avoid the shortage of this resource, which has been affected by the drought. Amazon Web Services has detected in your Villanueva de Gállego data centerin Zaragoza, -partially surrounded by the Ebro River-, a total of 21 leaks and other types of water losses.
Its detection and solution has meant avoid the loss of 33 million liters of water per year, which can be used for irrigation. To this extent, Amazon Web Services has collaborated with Fido Tech, a water leak detection company for which it uses AWS services.
The measure implemented has focused on install acoustic sensors Fido in 45 kilometers of the town’s water network to identify both the location and size of the leaks.
These sensors have been attached to the outside of the network’s pipes and meters, in addition to using the Machine Learning algorithm from FIDO, also uses AWS services to listen to leaks and analyze them. This allows, along with knowing its location and size, to prioritize the most important ones.
With the repairs, losses of 33 million liters of water per year have already been reduced. The objective is to be able to take advantage of the water. Thanks to the collaboration with the local partner Mediodes, an environmental group specialized in protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems and solutions for nature, a project will be carried out in which Drainage water from nearby crop fields will be used to AWS operations in Spain to irrigate a poplar forest downstream. This forest will act as a natural filter absorbing nutrients from the water and preventing them from reaching the river.
With the entire project, it is estimated that 864 million liters of clean water will be supplied each year to the community. An amount that will contribute to improving water quality and reducing the amount extracted from the Ebro for irrigation.
In addition to the AWS infrastructure in Villanueva de Gállego, the company also has data centers in Huesca and El Burgo del Ebro, the three enclaves making up the AWS region in Spain. The company’s activity in this first year has continued to advance, so that it offers its services to tens of thousands of clients in the Iberian Peninsulaalthough it is not yet at full capacity.
Although the centers are working, the AWS region project in Spain contemplates a period of ten years, with a investment of 2.5 billion of euros. The impact on the national GDP is estimated at 1.8 billion euros and the generation of employment is estimated at 1,300 full-time jobs.
These figures could be expanded, since it is not ruled out that AWS could open a fourth data center in Zaragoza, considering the Recycling Technology Park, although the operation is not yet 100% closed.
