Development of an indoor air quality index for heritage conservation

Subtitle:an exploratory study

Indoor air quality plays a significant role in the preservation of cultural heritage. Multiple studies have demonstrated that it is possible to slow the degradation speed of heritage objects by improving environmental parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, the intensity of visible light, the intensity of ultraviolet radiation, particulate matter and gaseous pollutants. However, the assessment of how adequate storage conditions are for heritage conservation is a complex and challenging task. Experienced heritage guardians can intuitively determine indoor air quality through sensorial perceptions. Nevertheless, this intuitive perception is very personal and results in different or contradictory opinions, and it is not always in agreement with a rational analysis of risk: apathy for certain risks or panic for small risks might occur. Therefore, an objective air quality assessment requires the acquisition of environmental information, which implies registering and managing a considerable amount of data. The absolute values and trends of the monitored parameters can be visualised via graphs. Unfortunately, this gives an indirect impression of the air quality. Many heritage guardians perceive such information as too technical and difficult to interpret, or as meaningless and without value. This thesis investigates the possibilities of an indoor air quality index as a method to directly assess, quantify and visualise the quality of the storage conditions. Moreover, the present study also shows that evolution in quality can also be visualised over time. Several methods were used for this, such as the interpretation of existing guidelines and standards, the measurement of a larger number of environmental parameters than just temperature and relative humidity with corresponding limit values collected through literature research, and data mining techniques. In order to give heritage guardians access to the proposed methods for processing data, a user-friendly software was developed to convert measurements of environmental parameters into an intuitive indoor air quality index. The main goal of this research is to provide a comprehensive assessment and an intuitive but consistent and reproducible representation of the quality criteria that characterise the air quality in museums, churches and storages.

Publication year:2019

Keywords:Doctoral thesis

Accessibility:Open