The Venice IQP: Past, Present, and Future

Post date: Sep 05, 2017 4:40:59 AM

While looking towards the future, it is invaluable to look back to past experiences that have guided the path to the present. The Venice Project Center has been around for nearly 30 years now, and by considering former projects one can glimpse the succession of projects that has led to ours. One project that stuck out to me was “The Impact of Tourism on the Venice Public Transportation System”, a past Venice IQP from 2012. The project’s objective was to determine how the massive number of tourists affect Venice’s transportation capabilities. Since the only effective transportation currently in Venice is by boat, this previous IQP team collected passenger data on each of the most well-known boat stops. They found a strong correlation between the hours where traffic was the heaviest and the hours where tourist cruise ships were entering. They also found that Venetians make up the majority of passengers on the lesser known ports.

This project was incredibly important to the creation of our project. While the 2012 project did not propose a solution to the massive jams at the ports of Venice, it did identify a much broader issue: the lack of an effective transportation system through Venice. Our project now is to try and solve this very problem. What I find most interesting is the idea that one day, the project we are beginning now will be used by a future IQP team to help solve another problem, and make Venice a better place.

-Sean R. Cody

Works Cited:

Hock, Lindsay Ann et al. The Impact of Tourism on the Venice Public Transportation System. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 2012.

Unknown. “My World In Venice.” My World In Venice, Wordpress , 15 Oct. 2015. Accessed 9/3/15. https://myworldinvenice.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/crowded-venice-italy.jpg