Venice has been making major moves in an effort to limit tourism and protect the sensitive ecosystem around the Italian city. From limiting the number of visitors and charging an entrance fee to banning cruise ships, Venice has gone to extreme measures. What many tourists don’t know, however, is that public officials are also watching your every move when you’re visiting.
Using 468 CCTV cameras, optical sensors, and a mobile-phone tracing system, Venetian authorities are watching movement all over the city. They can tell visitors from residents, where people are gathering, and even how many boats and gondolas are on the water and how fast they are traveling at any given time.
“This is the brain of the city. We know in real time how many people are in each part [of the city] and which countries they’re from,” Marco Bettini, co-director general of Venice, told CNN earlier this year. Venis is the tech company that built the surveillance system, which operates out of police headquarters in an old warehouse in town.
Every 15 minutes, authorities get a snapshot of what is happening in the city so they can make adjustments. Boats can be added or removed from service, additional buses can be sent out to reduce traffic in popular areas, and officials can get an accurate count of how many people are in Venice and close off entry until the numbers decrease. They can also use the data to track patterns and determine what attractions are drawing the most interest from visitors to make adjustments ahead of time.
