The Portage Valley in Alaska was carved out by a receding glacier. Winds often reach speeds over 100 miles per hour throughout the year, temperatures plunge below zero, and rain and snow is present more than half the time. But it is still a famous destination that the Park Service wanted to share. So a stunning Visitor’s Center made of two foot thick walls of concrete was built to withstand the elements. It cost more than twice as much to build in materials than a typical building 50 miles away.
We wanted to monitor traffic flow through out the season and by monitoring and recording, it limited our liability if anything should happen. Fortunately, Mobotix cameras could be installed without using any heated enclosures or extra protection. They just had to be strapped onto the outside of the building real tight!
One of the cameras is five kilometers away. Its job is to monitor truck traffic flow in a State owned gravel pit. Before the camera system, it was unknown how many trucks or what trucks were using the gravel as it is an unattended pit. One of the obstacles encountered was the sheer remoteness. This isolation means we had to generate our own electricity by means of a wind turbine. Then we needed to send the video footage to the Visitors’ center wirelessly over a forest of trees for recording and viewing.
TecPro Solutions, in Alaska, overcame all of this and has offered us an opportunity to more accurately determine what our gravel pit traffic is as well as monitor traffic flow at the world famous Visitor’s Center. The cameras’ robustness has prompted us to implement without fear of failure in other rugged environments around Alaska.
