Post date: Sep 09, 2015 6:59:1 PM
Over the past week, we have primarily been gathering data and information from past Venice projects to flesh out the background and already proposed solutions for reducing wake in Venice. The plan is to analyze these past studies to not only have an idea as to the extent of the problem and proposed solutions, but also to find weaknesses or overlooks that could turn into new avenues of research.
The first, and most promising, of the projects that we studied was a 2006 project focused around re-engineering the Venetian taxi system to increase route efficiency, thus reducing wake. This project studied both the design of the actual taxi boats along with how they operated, and concluded with several potential solutions which ranged from changing the taxi dispatch system to the boat design to reducing boat speed. However, many of these solutions were deemed unfeasible due to a variety of social and financial factors. We will be looking into these solutions and talking with our advisers to see if these continue to be unlikely, or if there's another way to tackle them that might make them viable.
A separate project made in 2001 took a look at the cargo delivery system to see if any improvements could be made. Although the project had no obligation to reduce or even look at the wake produced by these boats, their solution resulted in a significant increase in boat travel efficiency and thus a reduction in the net wake produced. Although their solution seems fairly steadfast and its implementation in the City of Venice is already complete, there may be new inefficiencies which may have since cropped up and may be worth looking into.
Finally, the third most useful sources of information we've found in the past projects have been the projects which have cataloged and recorded extensive amounts of data on the wake produced by different Venetian boats in different circumstances. The 2002 Moto Ondoso Index project, for example, which has been contributed to by multiple wakes projects after its inception, attempts to produce models and equations for how much wake is produced by each type of boat. These equations will be invaluable for performing quantitative analysis on our solutions and results, and one of our goals will be to add to it by adding wake data for the Alilaguna and ACTV transportation boats.
Now that we have a fairly good idea as to what past moto ondoso projects achieved, the goal is to broaden our research to the rest of the world. We have a meeting with WPI librarian Karen Bohrer and have begun searching on scientific journal repositories. More on that next week!
The Wakes Team