Salute Evacuation Model

We have arrived in Venice! While our team becomes acclimated to the new environment, we would like to share a portion of our previous work.
One of the primary reasons for studying pedestrian traffic is to get an idea on how pedestrians would behave in an evacuation scenario, so policies can be put in place by city officials to manage crises as efficiently and safely as possible.

Using code from a previous IQP, who examined mostly boat movement, we have put together a rough simulation of an evacuation of the area around the Salute church during the Nov 21 Festa della Salute.



There is a video here, and our code can be found here.

Venetian Mobility: Modeling Movement by Land and Sea

We are pleased to announce that the proposal for the 2009 WPI Interactive Qualifying Project, Venetian Mobility: Modeling Movement by Land and Sea has been finalized and made available for viewing by the general public. This proposal represents seven weeks of focused and intensive work by our project team.

We would also like to acknowledge several individuals for their help in the creation of this proposal:

Fabio Carrera
Daniel Gibson
Stephen Guerin
Simon Mehalek
Andrea Mancuso
Christine Friese
Oljora Rezhdo


Moving forward, we are excitedly approaching our arrival in Venice and preparing accordingly.

The Feast-day of the Madonna della Salute

"The Festa della Salute is probably the least "touristy" of the Venetian festivities and evokes strong religious feelings among the city's inhabitants.

The holiday is, like the Redentore, in memory of another bout of pestilence, which lasted for two years from 1630-31, and the subsequent vow by the Doge to obtain the intercession of the Virgin Mary.

Even today, thousands of inhabitants visit the main altar of the imposing Salute Church on November 21 to give thanks, and a strong symbolic tie remains between the city and the Virgin Mary."

For our project, this event will give us a valuable opportunity to examine the behavior of pedestrians in large densely packed crowds. Not only will we be able to use this data as a comparison point for our pedestrian model, but we can also use this event as a focus point for a model simulation of an evacuation event. A map containing the location of the temporary bridge is here.


View Salute Event in a larger map

Vaporetti Map

The city of Venice has a public transportation system that consists of "water buses" or vaporetti that move around the city by a set network of stops, as seen on the right.  These traverse the city and also go to Marco Polo Airport, Lido, and Murano, among other key locations.