The creation of the Atlas of the Lagoon of Venice was made possible thanks to the work, at last integrated and coordinated, of dozens of researchers and technicians, by means of agreements between institutions operating in the city of Venice (Italian Council for Research - Institute of Marine Sciences, IUAV University, Ca’ Foscari University, Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts), and beyond (Technische Universität, Berlin; Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Boston), and thanks to material provided by the Venice Water Management Authority, Venice provincial authorities, ARPAV (Veneto Regional Environmental Protection Agency), the Venice Museum of Natural History and other institutions operating in Venice and outside Italy: it would take too long to list them here, but they are to be found in the Appendix; our thanks go to them all. These agreements led to the creation of scholarships, research fellowships and research doctorates for a dozen or so young scientists. A work group was thus created, composed of these researchers and their tutors and, in the course of weekly meetings with the staff of the Osservatorio Naturalistico della Laguna, the organisation of the Atlas emerged. The objective was to bring together and organise the knowledge held by separate research bodies, so that both citizens and various institutions could refer to a single, shared information base, while understanding the differences between the approaches and their conclusions. The Atlas seeks to provide a visual knowledge tool, accessible for both professionals (technicians and administrators) and the general population; an instrument which goes beyond mere organisation of data and translates the results of studies directly into thematic maps. For this reason, the Atlas provides a simple descriptive entry for each thematic map which may be read at various levels. The workgroup asked the organisations and institutions to make a selection of the materials which, in various contexts, they had produced. The aim was to choose and adapt existing information, rather than request and/or produce new material. Most of the institutions responded promptly, providing documentation which had not been given due recognition previously, or adapting for the Atlas information that had originally been prepared for other purposes. The preparation time was relatively brief – about two years from the first meetings. In this period, the whole workgroup participated in a painstaking, creative design process, meticulously performing the tasks of orientation and organisation, involving all the players (in the research field and beyond) and maintaining close contacts with the individuals responsible for each plate of the Atlas.