A dynamic geomonitoring system for Venetian coastal ecosystem: WATERS project
The main purpose of the WATERS project is to set up an innovative system for integrated monitoring of environmental parameters in the water body of the Venice lagoon, allowingwith limited investment and low operating costsa sharp improvement in the environment survey and restoration practices. For this aim, 15 boats from AMAV's operating fleet, daily travelling over wide areas of the territory for normal refuse collection service, shall be equipped with special monitoring and data transmission devices. The research, co-financed by the European Union (EU) within LIFE Program 1997, to be carried out in tight cooperation with the appointed local authorities, shall be performed as follows: (1) testing and development of special monitoring equipment to be installed on the foreseen 15 AMAV's boats; (2) installation and testing, on the same boats, of GPS-NAVSTAR high-precision differential positioning system, integrated with available navigation instruments through a Kalman sequential filter; this system shall allow tagging of each sample with precise time and position reference marks; (3) set up of a data processing and transmission system, from AMAV's boats to a central control station; (4) development of a suitable geographical information system specific to the coastal environment, receiving the continuous flow of environment monitoring data, open to new software applications and created on the basis of existing historical and scientific documents; (5) design and development of a laboratory boat for supplementary hydrodynamic and physicochemical data, for taking samples of water, sediment and biomarkers, and for detailed in situ analysis of phenomena through the on-board equipment; and (6) validation of the correlations found among physico-chemical, biological and hydrodynamic environmental variables and determination of critical environment matrices. As a final result, the research will define a real management strategy for coastal environments, a widely applicable model derived from the strategy to be adopted for Venice, a very complex ecosystem affected by many phenomena and many sources of possible pollution (anthropogenic, agricultural, industrial, etc.), in the presence of particular tidal variations capable of producing significant impacts on the environment.
geomonitoring waters project environment venice amav sdss