The form of coastal and fluvial landscapes is shaped using computational models and software packages—hec-ras, Delft 3D, genesys, CMS. The list of risk equipment goes on for a while. Buried in these instruments is a sensibility that values prediction and control as a means of minimizing the perception of risk and communicating certainty. My work on ports and rivers has made me certain that these instruments deserve to be valued for their aesthetic properties as much as their certitude. In the words of Matthijs Kouw, “the risk equipment deserves more credit.” In Rome I will combine these tools with field observations and analogue techniques to probe the past of Portus. Mine is not an effort to simulate the expertise of other fields. Rather, by exploring the aesthetic potential of risk equipment I hope to draw upon not only the rich history of measurement, precision, and prediction, but also exaggeration, complexity, and ambiguity in landscape, to better grapple with muddy terrain.