A group of Italian scientists has come up with a plan to help save the sinking city of Venice by pumping sea water deep into the sand deposits underneath it, Italian media reported Wednesday in Rome.

According to the team at the University of Padua, their idea could raise the lagoon city by 30 centimeters - not enough to prevent flooding entirely, but a substantial improvement on the present situation.

St Mark's Square on the Venice waterfront floods about 60 times a year nowadays. A century ago, before the sea level began rising and subsidence set in, it happened only about 10 times each winter.

Italian Professor Giuseppe Gambolati, the brain behind the scheme to lift the city, explained that about 18 million cubic meters of water have to be pumped into the ground each year for 10 years.

The water would be injected at a depth of 600 meters into a stratum of sand which would swell and lift the ground above it.

Venice has already begun confronting its flooding problems with the so-called Moses flood-barrier project. Work began last year on building inflatable barriers which can be raised at the inlets into the lagoon when "acqua alta" (high water) is predicted.

Gambolati, an expert in applied mathematics, said he believes that his project should go hand in hand with Moses project.

"We have no dispute with the Moses project, which is both sound and necessary, but we think our idea can help too," he said, adding that it would cost a tenth of the Moses plan's 8,000-million-euro price tag.

He said Venice's local authorities had shown "considerable interest."

Gambolati and his team are to meet municipal officials next week to discuss launching a phase of concrete experiments.