Relocating Venice to a new site has been mooted as one possible option to protect it from rising sea levels as the increasing number of flooding events threaten to overwhelm the city’s infrastructure.
Scientists have been assessing potential adaptation strategies for Venice as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth assessment report. Other possibilities include the installation of movable barriers, ring dikes and closing the Venetian Lagoon entirely.
Venice is a particularly stark example of the challenges that many low-lying coastal areas face globally – with other areas such as the Maldives, the Netherlands and coastal cities also facing challenges in the future.
Venice’s current flood defences include a trio of movable barriers at the lagoon’s edge, but the city has still flooded increasingly often over the past 150 years.
The research team estimate that, if additional measures are implemented, the existing movable barriers may be effective against sea-level rise...