Post date: Sep 10, 2015 3:39:10 PM
Through the past week of research, I think my biggest surprise has been the sheer amount of data already on the topic of wake (or moto ondoso) in Venice. The Venice Project Center (VPC from now on) has an entire project already dedicated to eradicating the wakes caused by the taxi system, which is one of the primary wake emitters. Most of our project ideas have already been explored by them, albeit with seemingly minor results.
Although this seemed disheartening at first, it might just be a blessing in disguise. Since most ideas have already been initially tried, we can look back at them and see where their shortcomings and failures are to build on them. In this way, we might be able to make past solutions more feasible in the future. It also allows us to move straight past spending too much time developing brand new solutions for these old ideas, and to think outside the box for more innovative, perhaps "weirder" ideas.
What I am excited about, however, and which the other teams did not get much of a chance to look at, is working with an actual boat manufacturer in Venice on new boat designs. Giorgetti Marine is listed as a project sponsor, so I can only imagine we will be working with them on new hull deigns that produce less wake at low speeds. This is a brand new element that the previously mentioned taxi mostly wrote off as it would have been a long and and costly process.
Alex