Engineering marvels: The Venice Tide Barrier project

As a passionate practitioner in his field, Reddy Kancharla tries to keep tabs on the exceptional examples of engineering design that he has seen worldwide. One of these is the Venice Tide Barrier project, which he wishes to discuss in today’s blog.

You might have had an appreciation for Venice as one of the unique places in the world. Thanks to references in pop culture, especially in the movies, you can easily recognize Venice as a floating city. A lot of trade happens among buyers and vendors on boats.

Venice is actually an area that is naturally prone to flooding, shares Reddy Kancharla. It’s just that people have found a way to go around this challenge and even give Venice its very unique appeal. However, recent changes like global warming have made the weather more erratic, almost assuring that flooding and rising sea levels are an eventuality. The first to be impacted are the world’s coastal areas, like Venice.

Based on this knowledge, the Venice Tide Barrier project was initiated. Essentially this is a system of 78 flaps or inflatable gates that guard the city against rising tides. What makes this a very lofty aspiration is that it aims to separate the Venetian lagoon from the sea whenever high tides threaten, which is getting increasingly regular nowadays.

The project has been marred with delays and some controversy, but if its creators pull this off by the end of 2021, it will certainly be a first of its kind as brilliant engineering work, it is the largest dam structure in the world.

Reddy Kancharla has been involved in many projects over the years. These include various high-rise developments in New York City, the USTA National Tennis Center, Yankee Stadium, the Giants/Jets Stadium, and Terminals 1, 4, 5 and 7 of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Airport. For more on his work, visit this page.