An urban regeneration project will connect Rome and the Vatican City for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee, which will welcome 35 million visitors. Let’s spend some time taking a looking inside this historic project—and how technology will help keep water flowing.
First, a little bit of background: The project will extend the Lungotevere in Sassia underpass to enable the creation of a new pedestrianized zone that connects Castel Sant’Angelo with St. Peter’s Square. To support the project, Xylem provided advanced technology that diverted two major sewer collectors using a custom hydraulic bypass, a solution that redirects wastewater.
Here is how this can help:
- Quickly moves large quantities of water—10 cubic meters of water per second, which is the equivalent of filling an Olympic-sized swimming pool in four minutes.
- Continued collection of sewage and stormwater as the road system was relocated underground.
- Facilitate the enlargement of the system to serve the new urban layout.
Work on the underpass project began in September 2023 and is expected to be completed in March 2024. This isn’t the first time we have seen technology used to do work in this area. Peggy Smedley had an opportunity to interview a building engineer working on a project using a digital twin for structural monitoring of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. We can expect to see the rise of tech, as projects move forward.