The Venice in Peril Fellowship
at Churchill College, Cambridge
A Major British Contribution
to the Venice Flooding Problem
In 2001 Venice in Peril, and Cambridge University
teamed up to help resolve the longstanding arguments
over what should be done to protect Venice from
flooding. Venice in Peril funded a research fellowship
at Churchill College and a corresponding post at
CoRiLa (Consortium for Research into the Lagoon)
in Venice to look into the problem.
Cambridge Conference Setpember
2003 - Update
A major meeting of scientists in Cambridge has
considered the state of flooding research and made
recommendations
From 14 to 17 September 2003, 130 scientists gathered
from various parts of the world for a meeting at
Churchill College, Cambridge, to consider what is
known today about the flooding of Venice, its possible
prevention and any related ecological issues. An
important aim of the meeting was to identify any
major gaps or weaknesses in the research and procedures.
All parties involved in the research, such as the
Consorzio Venezia Nuova, CNR and the University
of Padua, sent high level representatives, and scientists
came also from St Petersburg, the Netherlands, the
USA, Spain to compare their experiences in analogous
situations. The mayor of Venice, Paolo Costa, sent
a personal message on video in which he emphasised
the ‘strategic importance of the meeting’.
The meeting was widely reported in the media, with
a two-page account of it in The Economist.
The Cambridge encounter was the result of a 400,000
euro, three-year project financed by the Venice
in Peril Fund, which has set up a fellowship at
Churchill College and financed a parallel post at
the Consorzio per la Ricerca Lagunare (CoRiLa) in
Venice.
The charity has in the past concentrated almost
exclusively on restoration, but now considers that
the flooding issue is the most pressing. In 1966
a storm surge caused a flood of nearly two metres
above mean sea level in Venice, and scientists say
that it is not a question of whether a similar event
will recur, merely when. In addition, the number
of minor floods has continued to grow: around 1900,
St Mark’s Square, the lowest lying part of
the city, was invaded by water around 10 times a
year. Now it is around 60 times. In fact, the broad
consensus among specialists is that Venice will
be uninhabitable by the end of the century if nothing
is done.
In 2002, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who
favours major public works, gave the go-ahead to
the mobile barriers project between the Adriatic
and the lagoon, at the same time as he approved
the bridge across the Straits of Messina and the
high-speed train across Northern Italy.
The barriers are to be completed by 2011 at a cost
of 4.1 billion euros. A prototype section of the
barriers was successfully tested as long ago as
the 1980s, but their execution has been delayed
by objections from, among others, the Green Party,
which believes that they would cause the lagoon
to become dangerously polluted if closed frequently.
There was, however, no serious challenge at the
Cambridge meeting to the underlying concept behind
the barriers, all the scientists, whether Italian,
British, US, Russian etc, accepting that they are
necessary.
At the end of the four days, the chairs of the
various sessions gave their conclusions, and Cambridge
scientist Tom Spencer, head of the Coastal Research
Unit, presented a synthesis, which emphasised that
a new and vital phase begins now for science as
the project starts to be executed.
Old questions have been sharpened by the decision
to build the gates, he said, such as the issue of
sediment exchange between the lagoon and the Adriatic
(currently the lagoon is losing sediment fast and
becoming more like open sea). Might the gates even
be used to improve water circulation around the
lagoon, as suggested by Professor Don Harleman of
MIT?
The implications of the rise in the sea level (22cm
by 2100 anticipated for the Venice lagoon by CoRiLa)
and changes in storminess will be vital to the functioning
and life of the barriers, and better data collection
is needed in this area.
Dr Spencer reminded everyone that decisions would
inevitably have to be taken even in the absence
of complete knowledge, and the barrier scheme would
almost certainly have to be modified in the course
of its execution, as has occurred with all similarly
complex projects, such as the Eastern Scheldt barriers
and the Cardiff barrage.
For the project to go ahead without unnecessary
polemics and risk, the following recommendations
were made:
- there should be ongoing, officially constituted
peer review, preferably outside Venice, of engineering
developments, including risk management, scientific
research and decision making;
- a ‘central bank’ to increase the
free flow of data should be created. This should
should be open to all. (This is needed because it
emerged at the meeting that data was not always
being being published or at least made available
between the various research groups, the Consorzio
Venezia Nuova admitting publicly that it took three
years to release some kinds of research data);
- there should be formal, comparative studies of
models and monitoring of predictions;
- there should be outside observers of how the
public is consulted. The experience of St Petersburg,
which is also building a barrier, shows the importance
of good communication between stakeholders, decision-makers
and scientists. The Venetian case has suffered from
very poor communication over the years;
- a future meeting should look at the socio-economic
factors affecting the life of Venice and the measures
needed to keep it a living community.
Cambridge University Press are publishing the scientific
papers of this meeting after they have been subjected
to peer review, while Venice in Peril, with a major
contribution also from the J. Paul Getty Trust,
will produce by the autumn of 2004 an illustrated
booklet for the layman, in English and Italian editions,
and send it to decision-takers and opinion-makers
worldwide.
The
Science of Saving Venice - Review by Marcus Chown
in New Scientist
