Evaluation of design waves along the Adriatic coast of the Venice lagoon

The prevention of flooding inside the Venice lagoon requires a system to disconnect the North Adriatic sea and the lagoon hydraulically in order to control the water level. This requires the definition of extreme design wave conditions for the various structures. This paper describes numerical modelling using a parametric wave prediction model to derive the design wave conditions outside the inlets to the lagoon. This includes a description of a verification study using buoy measurements and a sensitivity study into the effect of uncertainty in the model parameter settings.