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The Feb. 16 collapse
of a 315-ft-long launching truss being used to construct the
Maumee River Bridge in Toledo, Ohio, which killed four workers
and injured five, occurred on a project with eight jobsite
Webcams. But apparently none captured images of the accident
that are useful for the investigation. In fact, none ìcapturedî
anything at all. Their images are not archived. They are automatically
over-written by new views on the Web every 15 seconds.
Ohio Dept. of Transportation spokesman
Joe Rutherford says archiving was considered when the DOTís
technical staff planned the system, which was designed in-house,
but the idea was discarded. ìThe sheer magnitude of the data
collected would have exceeded our methodology of storage and
archiving,î he said. ìWe believed people would want to see
live images.î Rutherford doesnít recall if planners discussed
the legal ramifications of archiving Webcam images. The systemís
purpose, as far as Ohio DOT was concerned, was to inform the
public and keep it engaged in the project.
We think a potentially important tool has been misapplied. A
photographic record could aid in understanding what happened.
Although job cams are fairly blunt tools for forensic investigation,
typically covering vast vistas with low resolution images for
months and even years at a time, images can be sampled and captured
reasonably to evaluate claims and for post-incident investigations.
Brian Cury, president of Hackensack, N.J.-based EarthCam, which
sells job cam systems, says his service archives images from
Web feeds for about half of his clients, typically collecting
one every five minutes or so and burning DVDs at the end of
the job. He says some owners, including the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, require the archiving of job cam images in project
specs.
Cury says the records have aided
investigations even when the critical moment was not captured.
ìIt will tell you what the conditions were like just before
and after, and you can play it back very quickly,î Cury says.
Requiring job cam archives creates several burdens in terms
of data storage, cost and legal liability. But as is the case
with most applications of information technology, benefits
can come to outweigh initial burdens as users gain experience
and data is managed more intelligently.
In the case of the Maumee River
Bridge accident, we will never know whether the job cams in
use could have served a higher purpose than maintaining public
involvement. It seems certain that a more thoughtfully designed
system would have.
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