Project Complete!

Post date: Dec 17, 2012 2:58:44 PM

In the last weeks of the term, the team worked hard to collect and analyze final measurements, and to present our work in our final presentation and report. To assess the performance of our new devices, we conducted statistical tests on the data we collected from our verification tests. We found that the water level data collected by our measuring stick was very accurate compared to the levels recorded at Misericordia tide gauge. For our floating GPS device, we found that although the ouputted data from the phone app required correcting for accurate velocity readings, the device can be used successfully for documenting the general flow of the canals. If multiple devices could be built and released in several canals simultaneously, the tracks could produce a very interesting depiction of the city’s currents at a given time.

By comparing our data to data collected in 1999, we found some changes in current velocities. In particular, we confirmed change in Rio di San Felice in Cannaregio, a specific canal where gondoliers and other residents have noticed unusually fast currents. The team also received model results for one of our days of data collection, and were able to use the data to attempt to determine what variables in the models were possibly causing change in identified canals. Unfortunately these analyzes were inconclusive, but hopefully future WPI teams will be able to collect more data to make more definite conclusions.

We want to thank our sponsor at IPROS, Dr. Paolo Peretti, for lending us his measurement instruments and for giving us helpful advice for our project, as well as Dr. Georg Umgiesser and Dr. Michol Ghezzo from ISMAR, for providing us with data and model results for analyses. We’d also like to thank Centro Maree and Dr. Marino Filippi for conceiving the photo-based measuring stick concept. Finally, we want to give special thanks to our advisors, Professors Fabio Carrera and John Zeugner, for their wonderful support and guidance throughout the past semester. Our project would not have been possible without our sponsors’ and advisors’ help!

We all had an amazing experience in Venice and learned so much! We are grateful to have gained an understanding for the inner workings of Venice that few non-Venetians get the chance to have, and someday hope to return to the City of Water!