S. Marco 2803
30124 Venice
Tel +39 (0)41 529 3594
Fax +39 (0)41 5205119
website: www.salve.it/attivita
The Consorzio Venezia Nuovo is a body funded by
the Ministero dei Lavori Pubblici and the Magistrato
all Acque di Venezia, set up for the protection
of Venice and its lagoon, in implementation of Law
798/84. This law gives the government responsibility
for: the hydrological restructuring of the lagoon;
the reversal of the degeneration of the lagoon and
the elimination of the causes of this degeneration;
the lowering of tide levels in the lagoon; the defence
of the inhabited areas of the lagoon (through local
intervention) and the protection of these areas
from the effects of exceptionally high tides, possibly
by means of mobile dykes situated at the harbour
entrances.
The Consorzio Venezia Nuovo consists of a group
of national and local construction companies formed
to carry out studies, experiments and the planning
and implementation of work; because of the way it
is constituted it is able to plan, organise and
manage operations from start to finish, throughout
all the different stages. In order to carry out
its activities it has access to advice from national
and international scientific bodies, and the most
prestigious universities in Italy and abroad.
The Information Service is a branch of the Magistrato
alle Acque-Consorzio Venezia Nuova whose task it
is to organise all information and studies that
might be useful for the management of the ecosystem
of the lagoon. It is one of Italy's most advanced
centres for the application of information technology
to land management. The service is arranged in three
sections: libraries, data banks and IT support services.
To date, more than 20,000 documents have been catalogued
by the libraries, and more than 300,000 objects
listed in the data bank. The data thus collected
is used by the IT support systems to facilitate
the decision-making process.
The Data, Materials and Documents section of the
web-site
www.salve.it/attivita/pere/centri/frames/fsinf.html
is entirely devoted to the description of the documents
available via the information service, which has
a thriving production of original territorial maps,
mathematical models, models of levels of pollution,
and of co- ordination of the various studies, monitoring
services, projects and management plans for future
protection schemes.
The Information Service
uses working methods, criteria and procedures which
are valid for specific protection operations and
for a variety of other operations in the same area.
The Servizio Informativo provides constant support
to other organisations, including the Regione del
Veneto, the Comune and the Provincia di Venezia.
The data bank carried statistics on measurements
(physical, chemical, socio-economic) supplied by
geographical studies which use graphic cartography
expressed in dots, lines and areas. The data bank
carries a combination of measurement data (alphanumerical)
and graphic data (vectorial) in a comprehensible
logical structure consisting of data and programmes,
usually known as GIS (Geographical Information System).
The data bank contains data on the territory collated
from documents. The GIS is an information system
whereby the territory is viewed as a collection
of more than 300,000 different objects collated
via more than one million identifying attributes
(regarding land, water, the lagoon, the basin, the
sea, the administrative areas, population figures,
hydrographic networks and basins, fisheries, the
canal system, islands, bathometry, roads and railways,
monitoring stations, land structure, hydrological
groups, land use, land registry, competencies of
the magistrature with regard to land and land reclamation
consortia, distribution of phanerogams and areas
where macro-algae flourish, territorial transformations
etc), and territorial parameters by two billion
information elementals. The data bank provides a
general outline of the geography of the territory,
with data designed for generalised automatic use.
The data covers: the lagoon in all its morphological,
hydraulic-ecological and socio-economic aspects;
the basin as a factor in pollution and the Upper
Adriatic sea, whose tides govern the level of the
lagoon.
In the GIS, the geographical data is linked (in
the IT sense) to corresponding alphanumerical data.
For example, each area representing one territory
of the ecosystem is linked to the relevant information
on surface measurement, the name of the place it
represents, the number of inhabitants resident in
the Comune, etc.
The combination of measurement data and graphic
data defines a territorial unit. The loading and
accessing of data in the data bank is made possible
through three main programmes: Microstation,, MGE
(Modular GIS Environment) and Dynamo (Dynamic Analyst),
produced by Intergraph and based on object logic.
These programmes permit access to a database consisting
of graphic and alphanumerical data, or combinations
of the two. Access is possible via the application
of traditional comparison operators (bigger, equal,
included etc) to the alphanumerical data, and contextually
with the operators of the graphic elements (and,
or, not), using topological relations (of belonging,
exclusion, distance, adjacency etc) existing between
the graphic elements. The data base is thus completely
accessible, and is also integrated into the same
geographical space (Gauss-Boaga, fuso EST).
These programmes constitute the Territorial Information
System, one of the most advanced of the GIS systems
currently available. The data bank is constituted
through the definition of geographical and territorial
entities, which contribute in full or in part to
the construction of the data base of the data bank.
Visit the
Consorzio
Venezia Nuovo website.
