Italy: Venice controls visitors with a series of modern technologies

Italy: Venice controls visitors with a series of modern technologies

With hundreds of cameras and sensors and mobile phone tracing technology, all visitors to Venice will be monitored from police headquarters.

The famous tourist city of Venice (Italy) is applying a series of modern technologies to control the flow of tourists and minimize tourist overload. With 468 CCTV cameras, optical sensors and mobile phone tracing, the Venetian government can track each visitor, knowing which country they are from and what places they are visiting.

The system can know the travel speed of the visitor or the speed of the gondola. Source: Reuters

Every 15 minutes, authorities take a picture of the density of people in the city, as well as the number of gondolas moving through the canals. The system can even tell if the visitor's speed, the speed of the gondola and the water level has risen to dangerous levels. In addition, Venice is experimenting with controlling the flow of people right from the city's gateway, to stop accepting guests when the number becomes overloaded.

Previously, large cruise ships were banned from entering the lagoon in the city. Visitors will also have to pre-book their visit to Venice on an app and pay a tourist fee of between 3 and 10 EUR/day, depending on the time of year. Residents, students and business travelers will not have to pay this fee.

“There is a physical limit to how many people can be in the city at once,” said Marco Bettini, general manager of Venis, which built the surveillance system in Venice. We don't want to leave anyone behind or stop people from coming to Venice. We want people to book in advance, announce where they want to go, what to visit to provide a better quality of service."

All visitors in Venice will be monitored from a control center located at the police headquarters. Source: Reuters

The aim of these measures is to develop more sustainable tourism, in a city that welcomes up to 25 million visitors a year, said Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. Authorities have yet to decide on a maximum capacity figure and when the new rule will go into effect, possibly next summer.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro insists visitors do not need to worry about privacy, because the data collected is anonymous. What visitors need to pay attention to is how to behave and respect Venice. “There will be mandatory conditions for visitors. You can't hang out in a swimsuit, can't jump from a bridge, or get drunk. Whoever comes here must respect this city."