Venice Flooding - case study

1. Venice Floods November 2012 Luca, Alex and Harry.

2. Where’s Venice? Venice is a city in Italy, best known for the many waterways which criss-cross through it. It has developed a romantic reputation, and has a history dating from the sixth century The "City of Bridges", as it is usually called, stretches along the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. Out of the 270,000 inhabitants, about 62,000 live in the historic centre, or city of Venice, about 176,000 live in the mainland or "Terraferma", behind the lagoon, in locations like Mestre and Marghera, and all the others live on islands throughout the lagoon (islands around Venice are about one–hundred). Venice is located in the northern part of the Adriatic Sea just off the coast of Italy. This part of the sea is generally a calm area but during storms the waves crash onto the main land of Venice causing floods.

3. causes • Heavy rains combined with strong winds have caused flooding in several areas across Italy, with the problem particularly severe in Venice. • The storms haven't always had this effect on Venice. Before the island off the coast were able to hold back the storm water and keep Venice from flooding. • Lately however, the Adriatic Sea has risen and the islands can no longer keep the water from entering Venice causing the floods. • When the floods come in, the soil under Venice become very swampy causing the city to sink into the ground a slight bit making it more susceptible to flooding. • Venice's high water, or "acquaalta", said to be the sixth highest since 1872, flooded 70% of the city and was high enough to make raised wooden platforms for pedestrians float away. The record high water in Venice – 1.94 meters in 1966 – prompted many residents to abandon the city for new lives on the mainland. • Two weather systems converged to cause flooding in Venice, Italy over the weekend. No damage estimate was available yet. • A high pressure system over the Balkans, which extended into Russia, collided with a low pressure system over the Mediterranean. Together, the two weather systems pushed water north westerly up the Adriatic Sea and into Venice.

4. Causes cont • The result was a tide surge nearly four feet above normal – the sixth-highest tide since 1872. • Italian news reports said the same weather system that put 70 per cent of central Venice under water on Sunday was wreaking havoc elsewhere in north and central Italy,

5. Effects • High tide mark reached 59.06 inches at the 11th November 2012. • Four people were killed in Tuscany • Power cuts and transport disruptions (roads were swamped with deep flood waters) • Evacuation of more than 200 people • Shops, homes and historic palaces filled with water in Venice. • Local media said dozens of people took refuge on their roofs after rivers burst their banks in central Italy.

6. Future projects • Alessandro Maggioni, the city's assessor for public works, defended the Venice weather centre, describing the high water as "exceptional and unpredictable". The Moses flood barrier system being built to protect the lagoon, due for completion in 2015, would have kept the city dry, he said. "Meanwhile, there is no rise in the incidence of high waters. • They project that the number of storm surges northwards through the Adriatic that cause floods in Venice would decrease by about 30 per cent by 2100 because storms would tend to shift further north in Europe. • Under certain wind conditions, the Adriatic acts as a funnel along which waters build up towards Venice at the northern end. Italy is building flood barriers known as MOSE, Italian for Moses, to protect the city. • A barrier to protect the city from repeated winter flooding—known as the MOSE project —is due to be finished by 2014. Until then, "there's not much that can be done