Venice Holds Back the Water For First Time In 1,200 Years (cnn.com) 69
On Saturday, Venice successfully trialed its long-awaited flood barriers during the first acqua alta of the season. CNN reports: A previous trial in July, overseen by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, had gone well -- but that was in good weather, at low tide. Earlier trials had not managed to raise all 78 gates in the barriers that have been installed in the Venetian lagoon. Against all the odds, it worked. At 12.05 p.m., high tide, St Mark's Square -- which starts flooding at just 90 centimeters, and should have been knee-deep -- was pretty much dry, with only large puddles welling up around the drains. The square's cafes and shops, which often have to close for hours on end, remained open. And in the northern district of Cannaregio, Sebastian Fagarazzi's home stayed dry.
The defense system is called MOSE, the Italian for Moses, a name derived from the more functional Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, meaning Electromagnetic Experimental Module. It consists of 78 flood barriers installed in the seabed at the lagoon's three main entrance points. When the high tide arrives, they can rise to form a dam, stopping the Adriatic Sea surging into the lagoon and flooding the city.
The defense system is called MOSE, the Italian for Moses, a name derived from the more functional Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, meaning Electromagnetic Experimental Module. It consists of 78 flood barriers installed in the seabed at the lagoon's three main entrance points. When the high tide arrives, they can rise to form a dam, stopping the Adriatic Sea surging into the lagoon and flooding the city.
Mistranslation of project name (Score:5, Informative)
The English name is actually Experimental Electromechanical Module, which makes more sense. Strange that CNN would miss that and I don't even speak Italian. Pretty awesome project though!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Shapes, colors, sights, and smells are all illusions.
You are confusing the names of things with their essence. Shapes are not illusions although their names may be arbitrary. Race is a completely invented notion with no external objective meaning - it falls apart as soon as you call someone "white" or "black", colours which actual people never are.
Re: Great representation of what Whites accomplish (Score:2)
Race is an illusion. White race doubly so.
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Race is an illusion. White race doubly so.
:)
Editors, edit! (Score:2, Redundant)
Who is Sebastian Fagarazzi and why is his home more interesting or important than any other building in the city?
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Because it's the only house with a basement maybe?
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Come on guy, don't be so harsh. He's a jock, we can't expect much from him.
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Re: Editors, edit! (Score:2)
Creating a human element requires building context and audience investment.
This article was written by someone with all the storytelling prowess of a turnip.
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Why do you hate turnips and insult them so???
Humanity saves itself from itself (Score:5, Informative)
This is a monumental engineering achievement, and it has saved a real cultural treasure. Was hoping I'd have another chance to see Venice before it's wiped away. Now thanks to some great engineering and a giant pile of money we can all experience a true human marvel at our leisure.. maybe after a certain pandemic has passed and Americans are once again allowed to travel to Europe.
There are many great documentaries about this effort. I feel like I first saw this on Nova over 20 years ago, and saw one of the prototypes in person in Venice about 15 years ago. I would have assumed they'd be done by now but better late than never.
Here's a good documentary by DW - a German News channel that still somehow reports real news instead of the insipid rantings of bored news anchors...
Here is to a hopeful future [youtube.com]
I've got a feeling we'll be surrounding all our major coastal cities with similar flood control devices as soon as we realize that we've sunk our whole world by melting the ice caps. Seems like it would be cheaper to just switch to electric cars and renewable energy... but what do I know... I just hope your city is culturally significant and worth the trillions it will cost to protect from global warming and sea level rise, because this is not going to cheap. We are at the beginning stages of the largest migration in human history as we flea the coast lines for higher ground, unable to control our industrial pollution and fight global warming.
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On a side note, you have to admire humanity's knack for building stuff where stuff shouldn't be built (or fuck up the climate and make good locations unsuitable), then working its ass off to correct the problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place. That's quite remarkable.
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On a side note, you have to admire humanity's knack for building stuff where stuff shouldn't be built
Venice was just fine until it was finally conquered by Napolean. Prior to that, the lagoon and much of the stuff was owned collectively by the city/people and defended heavily. It was one of the most serious crimes to do anything that would damage the integrity of the system, which included both things like water collection and anything that interfered with silt. The latter needing to be regularly replaced
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It was one of the most serious crimes to do anything that would damage the integrity of the system, which included both things like water collection and anything that interfered with silt. The latter needing to be regularly replaced by the rivers of the Vento to stop the whole thing sinking.
Because all river deltas sump over time and must be maintained by annual flooding and deposition of new silt, any city built on a delta has to be engineered to take this into account. Venice and New Orleans have the same long-term problem.
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Actually before Napolean, Venice was still sinking, just at a lower rate than in modern times. But it was constantly being renewed. Sinking in the lagoon has always been a problem, even back then, but as the city sank it was just built up. You can see that in several areas of Venice where structure of early building is partially visible poking up slightly above the current pavement level.
Napolean declared that Venice should be preserved as is, and since that time, there has been no building and rebuilding,
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Quoth the wiki -
Ankh-Morpork is built on black loam, broadly, but is mostly built on itself; pragmatic citizens simply built on top of the existing buildings rather than excavate them out as the river flooded and the sediment grew too high. There are many unknown basements, including an entire "cave network" below Ankh-Morpork made up of old streets and abandoned sewers.
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On a side note, you have to admire humanity's knack for building stuff where stuff shouldn't be built
We tend to be a bit more selective now. ... things have changed a lot in 1600 years.
We have geological surveys, 100-year flood maps,
Venice's problems long predate climate change. You'd never get approval to build a city there today.
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Plate tectonics has nothing to do with climate change. Your Russian troll comment does not belong here.
Venice was doing very fine for hundreds of years. They were tiny compared to most other countries around the Mediterranean sea, but still a superpower. Whatever got them there - it was right, for this time and place.
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Re:Humanity saves itself from itself (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume you're joking about plate tectonics. Venice sinking has to do with the silt that it's built on, not the continental plate.
Re:Humanity saves itself from itself (Score:5, Informative)
I assume you're joking about plate tectonics. Venice sinking has to do with the silt that it's built on, not the continental plate.
Lots of references claim plate tectonics is a significant factor:
e.g. https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pres... [ucsd.edu]
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Hmm. That's pretty informative. I would mod you up if I could, but I've clearly already commented. I stand corrected. So, there seem to be a lot of articles referencing this and a lot of them seem to be claiming that almost all of the subsidence is due to subsidence of the Adriatic plate. That did seem a bit doubtful to me though, since the subsidence of cities built in river deltas, swamps, old lakebeds, etc. is a pretty widespread phenomenon and is not due to plate tectonics in most cases. Most of what I
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Dude, 1200 years ago, Venice was 2 meters higher than it is now. It is called Plate Techtonics, but back then they had no idea of it.
Not plate tectonics, subsidence. Principally anthropogenic. Dude.
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That is a good documentary if you like history as I do, thanx for the link, bit!
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I had the privilege of visiting Venice about 20 years ago. It's important to separate the engineering curiosity from the cultural marvel. They are truely a unique peoples. It's sad how politicians and generalities corrupt things.
It is also important to remember that they deliberately created an island where there was nothing before, which is distinctly different from foolishly building on land that would soon become an island. Even if the engineering is the same.
Their experiment, both political and scientif
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It is also important to remember that they deliberately created an island where there was nothing before, which is distinctly different from foolishly building on land that would soon become an island. Even if the engineering is the same.
Right, it's creating an island that would sink into the ocean. It can be an amazing achievement and an exercise in hubris at the same time.
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Well it did last longer than all of the civilizations around it... so...
The other civilizations around it didn't just vanish. They mostly got absorbed. Those cultures are still around in some form, and the game isn't over yet. Be patient.
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And then you will spend the rest of your life scrabbling as a subsistence farmer, because the market for your product is gone. Good fucking luck.
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it would be a pretty short life to be honest. Within a week roving bands of city dwellers would be cruising the countryside raping and pillaging. Bear in mind every grocery store in the US has at most a week or so of stock on hand.
Isolation also makes you a pretty easy target.
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City dwellers have no need to pillage. They live where the market is, so unless the rural areas want to starve, they will have to sell to the cities.
Goddamn people believing in this rural-ueber-alles myth are stupid.
No tides in the Mediterainian Sea? (Score:2)
So how could Venice be affected by tides?
Re:No tides in the Mediterainian Sea? (Score:5, Informative)
The tides in the Mediterranean are generally small. But in some areas they can be significant. At Venice the tidal range is about 1 meter.
But the problem is also when there is a storm and the surge from it coincides with a tidal maximum.
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So how could Venice be affected by tides?
Normally you'd read the article before posting inane questions that waste everybody's time.
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*Laughs in Dutch* (Score:3)
Half the Netherlands are below the sea line. When they need a bigger country, they just cut off whole areas from the sea and dry them out to build houses on them. In 100 years they may just decide to have a land border with the UK. The sea is theit bitch. :)
Re:*Laughs in Dutch* (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: *Laughs in Dutch* (Score:2)
Yes, this is because the sea gets deeper now. But hey, 100 years is a long time, and a lot of people born. :)
If global warming drowns all the things, all that will be left is mount Everest and you. :D
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In about 100 years we might have Brexit sorted, and will (still) be economically destitute, so will need a new revenue stream. The British/Netherlands sea canal could be a nice money spinner, with which we could start some new collaboration of nations to take on the EU, which by then will probably have spread enough to be talking to China and South Africs to see how they might be able to join.
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By then most of africa will already be living in the EU, so no worries there.
Re: *Laughs in Dutch* (Score:2)
Well, guess where *your* ancestors came from, buddy! :D
And when we will have deserted most of their lands, what do you expect? Do you want to live inside a dry roasting oven?
In any case, I think if our culture is so grand, then they will adopt it. And if not, and we can't even sell it to people who live in huts an can't read, then we weren't really all that special, now ar we? ... first they start drinking beer. Then sausages. Then it's all ov
(I experience the former. You always see people coming to Germany
Mind you, the vanes' builders are Dutch! (Score:2)
... at least that's very clearly what I remember from my first visit in Venezia, in the eighties, where I already saw a breadboard of the principle ;-)
A sad day (Score:3)
Dozens of rubber boots vendors lost their job.
It's not gambling if you game the system (Score:3)
Homer said Beer (Score:2)
Pizza (Score:2)
Let My Pizza Go!
1200 years?! (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, I mean, after a few beers holding back the water gets exceedingly harder, but not being able to hold it for 12 centuries warrants a doctor visit. At least that explains the smell...
*ducks*
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1200 years? Impossible. Try holding it for just a night and you could end up like Tycho Brahe.
1200 year-old technology? (Score:1)
Wait, so what did they do to hold back the water 1200 years ago?
(ie, why this particular number is used here?)
Boston considered a similar system. (Score:4, Informative)
About half of Boston's area is reclaimed wetlands that were filled just high enough not to flood at high tide. By the end of this decade mean sea levels will have risen 17 inches above that level they were when the land was filled. That means storm surge events on the right hand tail of the distribution are more likely to cause floods, and in recent years neighborhoods have indeed been flooding, as many as 22 times a year.
Boston exists because of its harbor, which is protected from the open ocean by a pair of peninsulas with islands in between. It would be feasible to build a series of tide gates across the mouth of the harbor that could be raised during storm surge events. The cost would be around 11.8 billion, which is a lot, but not really that much as far as megaprojects go; some cities have spent nearly five billion on sports stadiums.
However the barrier would disrupt shipping and have environmental impacts as well, so Boston opted to start raising the height of streets along the harbor, effectively turning them into dykes. The plan is to spend about 30 million/year (about 10% of the city's infrastructure budget) for the indefinite future on this.
New York also considered a system to close off the lower bay that would have cost about 60 billion over thirty years, but the Army Corps of Engineers suddenly withdrew support for the project studying the barrier after Trump mocked it in a tweet last January.
Useful Purpose (Score:3)
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Not watertight? (Score:2)
Move to a houseboat... (Score:1)