Overview
- The University of Salento released a peer-reviewed study that maps Venice’s options under rising seas and flags monument relocation and partial abandonment as the end point in worst cases.
- The team projects 42 to 81 centimeters of sea-level rise by 2100 in Venice, with added danger because the city is still sinking.
- The study finds the MOSE tide barriers become impractical around a 75 centimeter rise because near-constant closures would strangle the lagoon’s tidal flow.
- To buy time it weighs deep groundwater re-injection costing up to €400 million and interior ring dykes priced up to €4.5 billion that would bring safety and social trade-offs.
- For a last resort it estimates about €100 billion to dismantle and reassemble major monuments inland, leaving the flooded city reachable only for short visits by boat or submarine.