Briefing

A sustainable navigation Design challenge for inland waterways

Volta27 is organising 2 challenges, a Design challenge and an Engineering (performance based) challenge under the form of an electric boat racing competition.
Below is the Sustainable Navigation Design challenge for Inland Waterways, Navigating a Greener Tomorrow.

Lake Como is currently experiencing a profound socio-economic shift driven by intense tourism and capital investment. While this economic boom fuels the hospitality and luxury sectors, it strains local infrastructure, prices out permanent residents, and creates friction between community needs and visitor demands.

At the same time, the region’s economic reliance on lake traffic puts significant pressure on daily logistics, forcing working vessels—such as public transport, maintenance, fishing, and delivery boats—to share increasingly congested waters with an ever-growing fleet of recreational craft and luxury watercraft. The existing boating typology and the costly transition to sustainable navigation make the imposition of regulations toward e-yachting a difficult political decision. Lake Como has been amongst the first to adopt electricity (Como the Electric Lake) but progress in the number of charging points has been slow despite numerous examples across Europe, which have heavily embraced electric mobility and promote e-boats as standard for leisure navigation (Lakes Chiemsee in Germany, Balaton in Hungary, Léman in Switzerland, Wolfgangsee, Wörthersee, and Millstätter See in Austria, Masurian lake district in Poland or many lakes in the Scandinavian region)

Ecologically, the basin faces threats from significant wave action, shoreline erosion, underwater and surface noise, and climate-induced water level volatility further disrupted by the management of downward water flows to Lombardy from the dam in Lecco. The frequent churning from high-density boat traffic accelerates the degradation of historic lake walls and disrupts fragile aquatic habitats.

Addressing these challenges requires reimagining the lake's infrastructure, fleet, and services through design to improve life with and on the lake, ensuring it thrives as a balanced living ecosystem for the benefit of all.

Navigating inland waters—such as lakes, rivers, and canals—differs fundamentally from open-sea navigation due to the extreme spatial constraints and complex, multi-user dynamics of enclosed ecosystems. Unlike the open ocean where vessels contend with vast horizons and deep-sea currents, inland environments are characterized by narrow channels, shallow drafts, tight turning radiuses, and unpredictable river flows or locks, in addition to the occasional storm that affects lakes as much as the sea. The congestion on water bodies like Lake Como is uniquely dense, and heterogeneous working vessels, high-speed public transport, and heavy tourist traffic are forced to share the same limited surface area, while also respecting the life of the local residents, the rich cultural heritage of the site, and its biodiversity.

This creates hazards—ranging from shoreline-damaging wakes in narrow basins to safety conflicts between large ferries, fishing boats, working barges, and small, untrained recreational watercraft—requiring a distinct design approach focused on precision maneuverability, low-impact hydrodynamics, and tight spatial coexistence.

Design, through its original systems thinking methodologies—combining research, attentive fieldwork, both hard and soft sciences, and trial-and-error prototyping—has the potential to address the complexities of socio-ecological interdependencies and find novel interventions for the challenges of navigation and life with the lake.
Leveraging the region's rich industrial network and deep-rooted heritage in naval services, this Challenge focuses on Vessel (product) Design and Service Design.

The proposed brief aims to explore creatively the overall needs and opportunities of life on the lake. It is less a briefing that focuses on a single isolated topic—such as a docking system for safe recharging or achieving a point-to-point trip on less than 50 kWh to solve the problem outright. Instead, combining both approaches (open exploration and focused solutions) across a series of challenges will hopefully be a topic for discussion at the conclusion of the 2027 challenge.

BRIEFING: NAVIGATING A GREENER TOMORROW

Honoring Alessandro Volta’s legacy by researching and prototyping sustainable, low-energy electric navigation vessels and supporting services to improve life on inland waterways.

Reducing the overall lifecycle footprint through design approaches that respond to the unique needs of inland waterways—such as Lake Como, a living socio-cultural and ecological system.

Participants will develop or modify vessels and supporting services by integrating Industry 5.0 principles (Navigation 5.0), proposing responsible design interventions that favor local ecosystems, recognize the interconnectedness of society and nature, and question their broader impacts.

Vessel Design

Sustainable design or retrofit concepts for working or passenger vessels operating on inland waterways—ensuring a reduced supply chain and lifecycle footprint, high efficiency, minimized wake impact, lower noise emissions, and deep decarbonization through electric, hydrogen, wind, or hybrid configurations.

1. Public Transport & Working Vessels

Focuses on utility, community life, logistics, and essential connectivity.

Public Transport: Large passenger motorships (battelli), high-speed commuters/hydrofoils (aliscafi), and cross-lake vehicle/passenger ferries (traghetti).
Working & Maintenance Boats: Municipal service boats, law enforcement, fisher boats, fire rescue, sanitation, waste and debris collection and shoreline maintenance vessels.
Cargo & Logistics: Commercial delivery boats, construction barges, and material transport serving lakeside towns that lack easy road access.
Water Taxis: On-demand public passenger water transit for locals and daily commuters.

2. Residents & Leisure Vessels

Focuses on resident’s life, commerce, personal enjoyment, luxury and the visitor economy.

Private & Luxury Pleasure Boats: Historic wooden runabouts (e.g., classic Riva-style watercraft), modern motorboats, and private yachting.
Tourism & Commercial Leisure: Commercial tour boats, hotel shuttle watercraft, and guided sightseeing excursions.
Self-Drive & Rental Fleet: Small recreational motorboats and sailboats rented out to tourists.
Non-Motorized & Sports Watercraft: Kayaks, SUPs, rowing boats, etc.

Services Design

Sustainable service, infrastructure, and digital concepts for inland waterway operations—ensuring optimized dockside logistics, enhanced safety and data intelligence, streamlined visitor management, and active support for local socio-ecological coexistence around the lake.

1. Primary Services Operations & Physical Infrastructure

Focuses on tangible on-site services, physical assets, and the immediate operational needs of vessels on the shoreside, ranging from smart docking and recharging infrastructure to shared community logistics.

Energy & Charging Infrastructure: Fast-charging stations, grid capacity upgrades, and shore-power facilities for zero-emission fleets.
Mobility Hubs & Docks: Smart docking systems, passenger terminals, multi-modal transfer points, and water taxi stands including wave breakers, meters, etc.
Maintenance & Circular Lifecycles: Specialized dry-docks, repair facilities, and eco-compatible material recycling/disposal networks for boat parts.
Sanitation & Waste Management: Graywater/blackwater pump-out stations, shore-based waste collection for vessels, and lake-debris cleanup services.

2. Secondary Services Systems & Ecosystem Governance

Focused on digital architecture, safety protocols, data intelligence, policy frameworks, and visitor management to optimize traffic and spatial coordination on the water.

Traffic Management & Security: Smart monitoring systems, automated collision avoidance, geofencing for protected nature reserves, and emergency response coordination.
Logistical Intelligence & Digital Platforms: Booking platforms, real-time demand forecasting for public transport, and shared digital logistics for commercial cargo.
Ecological Monitoring: Real-time sensors tracking water quality, sewages, underwater noise pollution, shoreline erosion risks and wave-action impacts.
Visitor Flow & Tourism Governance: Smart tourism management tools that disperse crowds, regulate peak recreational traffic, and align visitor experiences with local capacity.

Requirements

Proposed solutions should (see also judging criteria)

Embrace the Local Context: Deeply integrate the economic, cultural, and ecological realities of lake living, focusing on Lake Como. If an on-site field survey in Como is not possible, students must complete a local lake survey alongside thorough desk research on Como to ensure their design interventions fit as well the socio-cultural landscape of Como.
Pioneering Sustainable Tech: Reduce, Recycle, Redesign... minimising lifecycle footprint, and utilizing zero-emission propulsion (batteries, hybrid systems), eco-friendly material lifecycles, and inland water-specific design, honoring Alessandro Volta’s legacy of inquisitive research and electrical innovation.
Apply Navigation 5.0: Integrate Industry 5.0 principles by designing production and service models that support local actors and regenerate the regional socio-ecosystem.