A distributed vision system for boat traffic monitoring in the venice grand canal

Motion detection and Tracking, Distribuited surveillance, Boat traffic monitoring In this paper we describe a system for boat traffic monitoring that has been realized for analyzing and computing statistics of trafic in the Grand Canal in Venice. The system is based on a set of survey cells to monitor about 6 Km of canal. Each survey cell contains three cameras oriented in three directions and covering about 250-300 meters of the canal. This paper presents the segmentation and tracking phases that are used to detect and track boats in the channel and experimental evaluation of the system showing the effectiveness of the approach in the required tasks.

Boats and Wakes

This group aimed to quantify levels of boat wakes in the Venetian canals over the past decade. The group found that both boat traffic and boat wakes are increasing, and will continue to increase. The group then examined several ways Venice could reduce these destructive boat wakes. The four possibilities include; changing the hull shape, enforcing speed limits, a taxi re-engineering plan, and a cargo re-engineering plan. If adapted, these proposals could reduce boat wakes by 57% in Venetian Canals

Traffic and Its Impacts

This project contributed to the ongoing development of an autonomous agent model of Venetian boat traffic by collecting detailed turning-movement counts at 17 intersections and updated indices for boat produced noise and wake pollution. These intersections had never before been studied nor had any of their traffic-related environmental concerns been assessed. The team identified the major contributors of each pollution type and recommended speed limit enforcement and more efficient traffic regulation as methods by which to mitigate potential environmental concerns

Street Mobility

Venetians’ quality of life is being affected through street congestion and safety risks introduced by increasing tourism. The team digitally modeled the streets of Venice and conducted manual and automatic pedestrian counts to learn about chokepoints and pedestrian flow across the city. The team concluded that manual counting was inefficient and inadequate leading the team to explore automatic counting through cameras. These systems were evaluated for reliability and continuous data collection to be used in a predictive pedestrian model

City knowledge : an emergent information infrastructure for sustainable urban maintenance, management and planning

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-256).(cont.) updates. It produces plan-ready information, by exploiting the self-serving and opportunistic pursuit of instant return-on-investment by frontline offices. Thanks to its emergent qualities, City Knowledge engenders unexpected plan-demanding situations, where the ability to conduct second-order analyses leads to deeper knowledge of our cities. In the end, this dissertation proposes a paradigmatic shift by recommending that information be considered as a bonafide infrastructure and be consequently treated with the same attention that cities reserve to other infrastructures such as utilities and roads. It proposes that communicative planners become catalysts of this transformation away from the "hunting-and- gathering" of urban data and toward the "farming" of municipal information.Recent advances in geo-spatial technologies, together with a steady decline in their cost, have inspired many spontaneous bottom-up municipal GIS initiatives aimed at improving many aspects of urban maintenance, management or planning. Some communities have institutionalized top-down citywide urban information systems with limited results, due to many organizational and institutional factors. Despite some encouraging progress, comprehensive urban information systems are still not commonplace and planners and decision makers still struggle to acquire the rich information that they need to conduct in-depth analyses and to make important decisions. This dissertation suggests a plausible strategy and several practical tactical solutions to set municipalities on a trajectory leading to City Knowledge. The concept of City Knowledge is introduced by first presenting numerous case studies ranging from the maintenance of the canals in Venice, Italy, to tree management in Cambridge to planning for Worcester, Massachusetts. Each of the cases reveals some lessons about City Knowledge, contributing to the identification of fourteen desirable qualities and consequently to the distillation of the six foundations of City Knowledge: (1) the "middle-out" approach; (2) informational jurisdictions; (3) fine-grained, distributed data management; (4) sustainable updates; (5) information sharing and (6) interagency coordination. The middle-out approach combines the virtues of top-down rigor and reliability with the bottom-up qualities of energy and creativity. Being an emergent system, City Knowledge leverages the dominant plan-demanded mode of data acquisition to gradually and inexpensively accumulate high-return data and to ensure sustainable, low-costby Fabio Carrera.Ph.D

A massive update of non-indigenous species records in Mediterranean marinas

The Mediterranean Sea is home to over 2/3 of the world’s charter boat traffic and hosts an estimated 1.5 million recreational boats. Studies elsewhere have demonstrated marinas as important hubs for the stepping-stone transfer of non-indigenous species (NIS), but these unique anthropogenic, and typically artificial habitats have largely gone overlooked in the Mediterranean as sources of NIS hot-spots. From April 2015 to November 2016, 34 marinas were sampled across the following Mediterranean countries: Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus to investigate the NIS presence and richness in the specialized hard substrate material of these marina habitats. All macroinvertebrate taxa were collected and identified. Additionally, fouling samples were collected from approximately 600 boat-hulls from 25 of these marinas to determine if boats host diverse NIS not present in the marina. Here, we present data revealing that Mediterranean marinas indeed act as major hubs for the transfer of marine NIS, and we also provide evidence that recreational boats act as effective vectors of spread. From this wide-ranging geographical study, we report here numerous new NIS records at the basin, subregional, country and locality level. At the basin level, we report three NIS new to the Mediterranean Sea (Achelia sawayai sensu lato, Aorides longimerus, Cymodoce aff. fuscina), and the re-appearance of two NIS previously known but currently considered extinct in the Mediterranean (Bemlos leptocheirus, Saccostrea glomerata). We also compellingly update the distributions of many NIS in the Mediterranean Sea showing some recent spreading; we provide details for 11 new subregional records for NIS (Watersipora arcuata, Hydroides brachyacantha sensu lato and Saccostrea glomerata now present in the Western Mediterranean; Symplegma brakenhielmi, Stenothoe georgiana, Spirobranchus tertaceros sensu lato, Dendostrea folium sensu lato and Parasmittina egyptiaca now present in the Central Mediterranean, and W. arcuata, Bemlos leptocheirus and Dyspanopeus sayi in the Eastern Mediterranean). We also report 51 new NIS country records from recreational marinas: 12 for Malta, 10 for Cyprus, nine for Greece, six for Spain and France, five for Turkey and three for Italy, representing 32 species. Finally, we report 20 new NIS records (representing 17 species) found on recreational boat-hulls (mobile habitats), not yet found in the same marina, or in most cases, even the country. For each new NIS record, their native origin and global and Mediterranean distributions are provided, along with details of the new record. Additionally, taxonomic characters used for identification and photos of the specimens are also provided. These new NIS records should now be added to the relevant NIS databases compiled by several entities. Records of uncertain identity are also discussed, to assess the probability of valid non-indigenous status

Landscapes of Control: River Infrastructure in the Mississippi Delta

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Cultural Heritage and Rising Seas: Water Management, Governance, and Heritage in Venice and Amsterdam

Global climate change poses threats, including sea level rise, that will affect cultural heritage. Cultural heritage is “the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible heritage attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present, and bestowed for the benefit of future generations” (UNESCO Office in Cairo, 2016).Venice and Amsterdam are two cities with cultural heritage sites and vulnerability to flooding as a result of geography and rising sea levels. This research is organized into two case studies that examine the history, water management strategies, current challenges, and governance of these two cities as it relates to protection of their cultural heritage in the face of flooding caused by sea level rise

The post-1948 development of, and prospects for, inland waterway transport in Britain

Imperial Users onl