Giovanni Cecconi

• MS
• Managing Director at Wigwam

Since 1989, intertidal dredge islands have been constructed in the Venice Lagoon using sediments originating from regular dredging of lagoon channels and inlets. Between 2005 and 2007, 75 dredge islands were surveyed in each year and the number of breeding pairs of seabirds and shorebirds estimated. The results showed that, of the 13 species that n...

Colonization of newly created habitats is a challenge for waterbird populations in a changing world. Knowing which habitat characteristics are required by waterbird populations is a research challenge for rational management of the new ecosystems and their aquatic bird populations. Since 1989 intertidal dredge islands have been built in the lagoon...

Since 1989, intertidal dredge islands have been constructed in the Venice Lagoon using sediments originating from regular dredging of lagoon channels and inlets. Between 2005 and 2007, 75 dredge islands were surveyed in each year and the number of breeding pairs of seabirds and shorebirds estimated. The results showed that, of the 13 species that n...

Coastal regions have progressively become more vulnerable to intense hydrodynamic and atmospheric events, thus raising important questions about their fate in the century of global warming. A variety of natural and anthropogenic factors have contributed to this fragility: eustacy, isostasy, soil compaction, reduced sediment supply and reduced exten...

The Venice Conference (12-15 September 2011) gathered experts in climate change adaptation to both learn from Venice’s experiences and activities, and to provide examples of best practices from around the globe to inform Venetian decision makers in the design of a plan of adaptive management and complementary measures for the Venice system. The pla...

Confined Ontic Open Systems is a new ecodynamic model based on Prigogine's thermodynamics, Ulanowicz's ontic openness and Coherence Domains with defined boundaries and constraints. The model has a wide range of applications, including ecosystems (e.g. invasive species, the lagoon of Venice), ecological economics, urban organization, the supra-molec...

Land subsidence is a severe geologic hazard threatening the lowlying transitional coastal areas worldwide. Monitoring land subsidence has been significantly improved over the last decade by space borne earth observation techniques based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry. Within the INLET Project, funded by Magistrato alle Acque di Ve...

It has been observed in Venice Lagoon that salt-marshes have appeared and developed as a consequence of the presence of artificial or biological confinements, maintaining separation domains in the hydrodynamic wave and tidal flow field.This surprising result is analysed in terms of a recently developed point of view on the emergence of self-organiz...

The formation of salt marshes (barene) in the Venice Lagoon is discussed in light of recent theories about the emergence of novelties. Namely, the emergent properties and the new formations are related to field quantum coherence domains and to dissipative structures. The boundary conditions, the ontic openness of the ecosystem and the continuous fl...

1] This paper deals with hydrologic studies relevant to the works engineered for the protection of the city of Venice (Italy) from major flooding under significant climate change scenarios. Such works foresee the temporary closure of the lagoon surrounding the city to tidal exchanges with the Adriatic Sea in times of sea storm surges via the operat...

We have monitored and analyzed, through remote sensing and ancillary field surveys, the rapid (O(1) year) development of a tidal network within a newly established artificial salt marsh in the Venice Lagoon. After the construction of the salt marsh, a network of volunteer creeks established themselves away from an artificially constructed main chan...

The Venice Lagoon, Italy, is a unique worldwide environment which is presently vulnerable due to loss in surface elevation as a result of land subsidence referred to the mean sea level. Land displacements in the Venice coastland have been determined over time by traditional monitoring techniques (i.e., spirit leveling and GPS). Recently, SAR-based...

Five salt marsh sediment cores from different parts of the Venice Lagoon were studied to determine their depositional history and its relationship with the environmental changes occurred during the past approximately 100 years. X-radiographs of the cores show no disturbance related to particle mixing. Accretion rates were calculated using a constan...

On the basis of the studies carried out for the Venice lagoon (Cecconi [4], M.A.V.-C.V.N. [9]), this work aims to set up an analytical method for the assessment, by means of proper indicators, of wave damages on both natural and artificial structures in urbanized lagoons. Recent field studies have revealed that wind and boats generated waves produc...

The Department of Physics of the University of Bologna (UNIBO), the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, sole agent of the Magistrato alle Acque (MA) for the management of the Venice Lagoon environment and the Italian National Agency for Environmental Protection and Technical Services (APAT), have recently started joint projects to determine and study vertical...

It is of particular importance to define and establish appropriate observational strategies characterized by the ability to measure, with high accuracy, spatially and time continuous deformations of the land surface. An ensemble of space, airborne and terrestrial techniques can be adopted by taking advantage of the complementary strengths of the di...

The storm surge prediction models have been continuously improving in the last 10 years, due mainly to the increasing occurrences of high water events and to its application to the optimisation of the mobile gates closure strategies. The first part of the paper describes the adopted classification method of the floods events in terms of return peri...

Storm surge prediction models for the Venice Lagoon in Italy have been co-developed and operated by Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI) and Venice Water Authority-Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN) for purposes of operation of proposed flood gates located at the lagoon inlets. Empirically based statistical forecast models have been in operation for many ye...

Nel presente lavoro viene sinteticamente descritto il nuovo sistema di monitoraggio dei litorali della laguna di Venezia, messo a punto dal Consorzio Venezia Nuova per conto del Magistrato alle Acque di Venezia. Nella presente memoria sono illustrate sia la strumentazione installata, sia le modalità di funzionamento del sistema, sia il tipo di anal...

On a intertidal flat in the lagoon of Venice (Italy), the effects of a fence on sediment elevation and vegetation establishment were studied throughout the years 1994–1997. With the use of a sedimentation erosion table (SET) we measured 5.7 cm of accumulated sediment in the protected tidal flat after 28 months (2.5 cm/year), compared with −=0.7 cm...

The present study was conducted in the Lago dei Teneri area of the Venice Lagoon in Italy. This area has long received massive pollutant input from the industrial area of Porto Marghera. It is adjacent to the Canale dei Petroli, an important industrial waterway. Because of its location, this area represents an ideal site for applying a new remedial...

Caratterization of the Venice storm surges

The present study was conducted in the Lago dei Teneri area of the Venice Lagoon in Italy. This area has long received massive pollutant input from the industrial area of Porto Marghera. It is adjacent to the Canale dei Petroli, an important industrial waterway. Because of its location, this area represents an ideal site for applying a new remedial...

Over the past century, Venice Lagoon (Italy) has experienced a high rate of wetland loss. To gain an understanding of the factors leading to this loss, from March 1993 until May 1996 the soil accretionary dynamics of these wetlands were studied. Vertical accretion, short term sedimentation, soil vertical elevation change and horizontal shoreline ch...

Over the past century, the Venice lagoon has experienced a high rate of wetland loss and a strong net export of sediments; currently the local Authority is running several projects for beneficial use of dredging materials. From March 1993 until March 1995 the accretionary response of wetlands in the lagoon to changing water levels was studied. Vert...

After a survey of seagrass distribution, an analysis of their ecological requirements, and the selection of suitable sites, the next step will entail transplanting Zostera marina and Cymodocea nodosa in several areas. -from Authors

The risk of flooding in Venice has increased strongly since the beginning of the century. To reduce the damage to the city and the negative impact on the activities in the lagoon, an accurate flood warning system is necessary. This system will also be fundamental during the construction and for the efficient operation of storm surge barriers coveri...

Presented in this paper is a simple method of forecasting the future monthly degree of satisfaction of an assigned water demand instead of the future supply. The supply series {Q(t)} is transformed into a state series {S(t)}, each state being defined by the ordinal number j = 1, J of the interval containing the value of supply, the intervals being...

A technique of identifying typical streamflows by the principal component method is proposed and its application to monthly streamflow of Po River at Placenza is shown. The investigation is restricted to six months from February to July in such a way as to cut a long enough sequence of high correlated monthly streamflows. The proposed method shows...

The Supplementary Material provides some details of the hydrological and hydrodynamic models used in the simulations discussed on the main body of the paper. In particular the material provided focuses on the Lagrangian description of the carrier hydrologic runoff and of the processes embedding catchment-scale runoff generation and transport throug...

The paper describes the relevant set of analogical, mathematical and phisical models used to simulate the hydrodynamics phenomena of the Venice lagoon. The various models are devided in two classes, depending on the scale: the great scale models, to examine the problems interesting the entire lagoon, and the little scale models for the problems loc...

The fundamental hypothesis assumed for the formulation of the conceptual model consists of a linear combination of effects due to free turbulence and to wall turbulence. The velocity distribution presents self preserving profiles and at the wall there is a shear stress depending on the relative roughness and on the square of the depth averaged velo...