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With Venice once again in the news due to flooding (www.dailymail.co.uk) a group of University of Surrey engineering students could have identified the solution.

Each year the University sets its final year MSc engineering students a Multi Disciplinary Design Project (MDDP). The students work in groups of six and spend four months on the project, there are 20 groups in all. The project briefs are set by ten of the university’s Visiting Professors and this year Professor Tim Beckett set his two groups the task of investigating the feasibility of raising the city of Venice permanently by one metre. Needless to say the raising had to be done gently and evenly so as to minimise the risk of damage to buildings or danger to inhabitants.

While Tim had some idea how the raising of Venice might be achieved the students avidly researched the issues and were soon raising technical queries that tested Tim’s ability to guide them. Fortunately the University provided two staff experts to help in the shape of Dr Marcus Matthews and Tony Thorne.

While Venice was chosen for the project because of its very clear and high profile need similar techniques could be suitable for general raising of valuable low lying areas or structures such as flood defences. There will be many advantages in trialling the system in areas that do not have the density of fragile historic buildings that are present in Venice.Pleasingly both groups determined that raising Venice by a metre is not only a practical proposition but is also likely to be an economic solution. They went on to identify the further work and testing that would be needed to prove their techniques prior to it being used on La Serenissima herself. In addition to producing a report on their proposals each group had to make a presentation of their results and prepare a poster summarising their work. To Tim’s delight one of his two teams won the Atkins prize for the best presentation; the photo shows the prize winning team with their trophy. From left: Tony Thorne, Dr Marcus Matthews, Sidong Ma, Oliver Currie, Ana da Silva, Emma Bruty, Prof Tim Beckett, Nick Adebanjo and Richard Archer.