Enhancing Public Safety and Health

Through Technology

Final Report Feb. 24, 2009

This project entailed using a form of surveillance equipment to help better secure the town’s water pumping and filtration building and the intake from the warm springs that the town and surrounding area draws its water from. It was decided to use the service called Reality Web initially to do this.

This would entail using cameras that would send a wireless signal to a computer with a static IP address and then using smart phones to view the cameras anywhere. We would have been able to monitor the building and water intake any time of the day or almost anywhere. Instead, we had to use a web camera based system with a static IP address and a gateway with a password.

The grant has made an impact in quality of services to the town’s residents and water customers outside of the town by providing much increased security. In addition, the cameras help to monitor the Berkeley Springs State Park, although in a more limited way. The camera attached to the building has a pan and zoom feature that also helps monitor the surrounding area.

The biggest obstacle in this project was the contractor. The contractor visited our facility and was confident that they could do the work for us in a timely manner. The contractor ended up scheduling a large number of jobs ahead of us and we kept getting bumped for bigger jobs near the Charlotte, NC and the Roanoke, VA areas. This made us have to file for an extension, which we were not happy about given the simplicity of the project.

Another obstacle was the price of the Reality Mobile services. The hosting services prices alone had gone up and would have been more that half of the budget just for one year. The decision in committee was made to use a web based camera system with a static IP address that the employees could access with the use of a gateway and password from home. This allowed around the clock monitoring of the water department and the water intake in case of vandalism, clogged water intake, etc.

The impact that this grant had on the population is that it increased the security and safety of their water source and the water that comes into their homes. This grant has had an effect on roughly 1,600 customers in our area.

Two things happened that we did not expect, and that was the contractor taking longer than we expected to finish, and that the Reality Mobile services were not able to be used due to expense.

The lessons that we learned will help in adding to this system in the future. The project is easily expandable and will be a huge asset to the town, county and perhaps the state in the future. We did find that we would need to cut costs in the project.

In the midterm report, I had reported that the amount for the project would change. The total amount was just as projected and is as follows:

Budgeted amount Actual Total Difference

4998.97 4998.97 0

The additional $1.03 was used to buy paper towels and glass cleaner to maintain the camera enclosures.

Please see the attached estimate, which was also submitted as the final bill for the project.


Town of Bath ~ Slideshow
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The Berkeley Springs Grant committee was awarded a Technology Mini-Grant from the Alliance of WV Champion Communities, Inc. The grant was awarded in August and the work was recently completed. This project entailed using a form of surveillance equipment to help better secure the town’s water department building and the intake from the warm springs that the town and surrounding area draws its water from.

Instrulogic Corporation and the Berkeley Springs Water Works crew were up and running to be able to view the operations of the water works from their homes in the event of an emergency. The final award ceremony for the grant will be April 4^th, 2009 at Reedsville, WV.

Photos of the setup and the locations are shown in the slide show above. The town and the grant committee sincerely appreciate the Alliance and all of their help in getting this system under way to help the community.

The project is easily expandable and we look forward to working with The Alliance in the future if possible.

The project was captured in several issues of the Morgan Messenger, which is the local newspaper, and the council minutes. It was also explained to many of the local citizens on a personal basis. The project also received state exposure due to one of the cameras being in the state park and helping to monitor that facility.

I believe that this grant solved our problem using technology. It did not go as planned, but we did overcome the obstacles that were presented to us and came up with a solution that still accomplished what we needed to do.