RAMSES (acronym of Rilievo Altimetrico, Modellazione Spaziale E Scansione3D – Altimetric Survey, Spatial Modeling and 3D scan) is an initiative that aimed to trace a three-dimensional relief of the historic centre of the city of Venice: its has been promoted by the municipal administration that contracted Insula to manage the project. RAMSES has been financed with Special Law funds amounting to approximately one million euro. The relief has been performed by a temporary joint venture composed by Tecap Studio srl and Innova Technology Solutions spa. RAMSES forms part of a series of long-term projects to safeguard Venetian lagoon performed by the Municipality through extra and scheduled maintenance and that, most of all, include the construction of the MOSE.

RAMSES project consisted in the creation of a very accurate plano-altimetric map of the pavement of the historic centre of Venice, obtained thanks to advanced laser scanners that allowed a full relief with a density of 8500 points per square metre of the entire floor (more than 20.000 scans). After this first phase, a three-dimensional representation of the city has been traced through an elaboration of the emerged results. According to the municipal administration, the carrying out of this project is vital for the development of other activities that deeply impact on the lagoon and the city. Accurate information about the structure of the pavement shall allow to predict the extension of the surface potentially affected by flooding, to calculate the elevation of building thresholds, to improve the set up of walkways and guarantee the transitability of people and goods. Moreover, the administration can use the planimetric and photographic relief to effectively organize maintenance activities concerning the water pipeline, the drainage system, the power distribution and the telephone networks located under the delicate pavement of the historic town centre.

Moreover, RAMSES can offer an extremely useful model to perform the simulation of any damages caused by tides in order to identify the areas where protection measures should be centered. In fact, this project is one of the key elements composing the plan of local interventions to safeguard the city from high water. The measures include, in some cases, the raising of the pavement and, in others, the sealing of riverbank’s walls surrounding several islands of the historic centre.

Any information concerning the project and the services provided by RAMSES are available on the following website: www.ramses.it.