10 - Georg Umgiesser, "The impact of operating the mobile barriers in Venice (MOSE) under climate change" (2020)

5. Conclusions

It becomes clear from the results above that the mobile barriers will be able to protect the city for moderate rises of the sea level, even with an elevated number of closures. However, it must be stressed that this study only deals with flooding and water levels.

Even if the mobile barriers will be able to protect the city up to a SLR of approx. 50 cm, the price is high when considering on average a frequency of one closure per day of the barriers. Above this value of SLR, it will become inevitable to consider a more radical solution. A possible solution is to raise the city by injecting water in the under-ground, another one is to completely close off the lagoon from the sea. Clearly, here we only consider hydrodynamics and the water level.

Implications on other aspects like temperature and salinity levels, or on the ecosystem will need a different treatment, and the frequent closures may have more profound effects on these topics. These aspects will be studied in subsequent articles.