Consorzio Venezia Nuova, Italy

Protecting Historic Venice

Intergraph® GeoMedia®-based Database Enables Easy Distribution of Geospatial Information

The Challenge:

Throughout the next five to ten decades, the rising tides of the Adriatic Sea, coupled with the sinking land mass of the African geological plate as it pushes under the European plate, threaten to slowly submerge the city of Venice, Italy – erasing some of civilization’s greatest architectural and artistic achievements.

Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN) – the private consortium that has proposed a solution to the threat facing Venice – needed to update and unify its spatial data management environment to meet the needs of the many parties involved in the project.

The Project Objectives:

Develop a unified, state-of-the-art environment for geospatial data management and the provision of current, accurate GIS information
Enable data access by multiple project partners in multiple locations
Provide information to support environmental analyses

The Solution:

The Venice solution, Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (Electromechanic Experimental Module) or MOSE, was approved by the Italian government in 2003 and is scheduled for completion in 2011. It features 78 submerged, mobile dams at the three entrances to the lagoon. When the sea tide rises above 110 centimeters, the dams can be activated by inflating compressed air and expelling water, thereby preventing the flooding of the lagoon and the city of Venice.

CVN and the Magistrato alle Acque of Venezia, the government agency charged with safeguarding and managing Venetian waters have employed Intergraph® hardware and software solutions almost exclusively for nearly 15 years. Their selection of a suite of Intergraph GIS and commercial photogrammetry products for the protection, management, and infrastructure maintenance of the Venice lagoon is the latest extension to the relationship.

CVN has integrated project GIS, mapping, engineering, and other data using Intergraph’s GeoMedia technology to create a central geospatial database that supports open standards, enabling access for all major formats. GeoMedia allows the team to create dynamic, intelligent maps; and GeoMedia WebMap software allows CVN to distribute project information via the Internet for easy access.

Right Hand Column