The Economic Assessment of the Impacts of the MOSE Barriers on Venice port ativities

The Venice lagoon identifies a complex natural system hosting a number of economic activities. Due to its hydro-geological conformation, it is consistently threatened by climate change. In particular, it is strongly threatened by global worming and average sea level rise inducing a higher frequency and intensity of the acqua alta phenomenon (i.e. the periodical flooding of the city centre due to particular astronomical and meteorological conditions). In order to protect Venice from the damages induced by the more and more frequent flooding episodes, various mitigation and prevention measures have been adopted, among which the mobile barriers system (MOSE) at the inlets. The adoption of such a protection measure limits the damages caused to Venetians and to the economic activities carried out within the lagoon (trade, tourism, public services, ¿). Nevertheless, it could interfere with port traffic, one of the still currently most relevant economic activities of Venice: the mobile barriers procedure of closing isolates the lagoon from the open Adriatic Sea and then interrupts the in and outflow of ships. Longer waiting time for ships entering or exiting from the lagoon could therefore induce additional costs, in terms for example of the charter costs and, for ships blocked within the lagoon from the mobile barriers closure, even mooring costs. As a consequence, the analysis of the potentially negative effects of MOSE functioning on port activities represent a relevant component of the analysis of the 'acqua alta' impacts on the Venice lagoon. Moving from this background, the present paper is aimed to estimate the costs induced by the interruption of ships' flow due to MOSE functioning through an hydrodynamic model applied to the port traffic experienced during the period 2000-2002. A partial analysis is proposed taking into account only the estimated costs for port users (direct costs) and not even the costs deriving from the eventual reduction of ships' flow (indirect costs). Nevertheless, the present paper contributes to the analysis of the effects of MOSE functioning on Venice port activities by integrating, even if through different methodologies, the study proposed by Nunes et al. (2005) on the benefits of MOSE functioning on the commercial activities carried out within the city centre and by enlarging the paper of Chiabai and Nunes (2008) on the negative effects on port activities. Our results show that the negative effects are limited. The present paper is structured as follows: Section 1 briefly describes the 'acqua alta' phenomenon and its evolution over the last century. Section 2 introduces the MOSE and its procedure of functioning. Section 3 discusses the effects of MOSE functioning on the Venetian port activities, considering the evolution of ship traffic since the Second World War. Section 4 provides an hydrodynamic analysis of MOSE interferences with the Venetian port traffic experienced during the period 2000-2002. Section 5 provides an estimate of the direct costs for port users due to MOSE functioning. Section 6 concludes.

VERGANO Lucia;  UMGIESSER Georg;  NUNES Paulo A.L.D.; 

2010-03-09

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

JRC52234

http://www.feem.it/getpage.aspx?id=73&sez=Publications&padre=20&tab=1,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC52234,