Innovative and affordable service for the Preventive Conservation monitoring of individual Cultural Artefacts during display, storage, handling and transport

Project Information

CollectionCare

Grant agreement ID: 814624

DOI

10.3030/814624

Project closed

EC signature date 21 February 2019

Start date 1 March 2019

End date 30 June 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Advanced materials

Total cost

€ 6 239 690,01

EU contribution

€ 5 759 193,13

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CollectionCare (Innovative and affordable service for the Preventive Conservation monitoring of individual Cultural Artefacts during display, storage, handling and transport)

Reporting period: 2020-10-01 to 2022-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Most museums contain an enormous variety of cultural heritage (CH) objects which differ in their material composition and conservation status. This, together with the fact that environmental control is usually carried out by measuring environmental parameters with devices that lack an integrated and coordinated vision of how environmental conditioning factors affect collections, makes it challenging to generate an effective preventive conservation (PC) strategy that guarantees a safe environment for the preservation of objects efficiently and more sustainably with the objective of preserving it for the benefit of society.
The implementation of the CollectionCare project has led to the development of an innovative and affordable preventive conservation system that allows the environmental monitoring of CH objects and assesses the risk of ambient-induced damage, thus providing recommendations to ensure a safe environment according to the specific conservation needs of each object. The basic idea is to create a system that consists of the assignment of an IoT device (wireless sensor node) to a CH object that monitors its environmental conditions such as temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), light (L), air pollutants (AP) and vibrations (V), at any given time and place, either during exhibition, storage, handling or transport. The resulting information is sent to a cloud computing platform to be stored and analyzed using advanced multi-material degradation models and allowing users to estimate the evolution of the degradation of the object as well as warnings and recommendations to ensure their proper conservation in the long term. Each end-user can obtain different data types from real-time environmental conditions, historical stored environmental conditions, degradation predictions, and conservation recommendations.
To reach this objective, the CollectionCare project integrated the latest advances and research in sensor electronics, wireless communications, big data, cloud computing and material degradation models to develop this preventive conservation. To do so, the CollectionCare consortium structured the work plan into ten different work packages (WP), combining research and system development (WP1 to WP6), project management (WP9) and innovation-related activities (WP7, WP8 and WP10).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

All planned activities have been carried out according to the work plan, that was slightly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. All milestones have been achieved.
The work of the CollectionCare project started in WP1 with the definition of a baseline of needs and a common language, which allowed the development of a common understanding of the objectives and starting points. Then, work began in parallel on the preventive conservation models (WP2), the big data cloud computing platform (WP3) and the wireless monitoring system (WP4).
In WP2, predictive models were implemented to predict the degree of degradation of the four classes of cultural objects selected for the project: canvas paintings, wooden objects, paper objects and metal objects. Based on existing literature, these models have been extended, adapted, and translated to mathematical algorithms, considering the specific nature of the object and the degradation agent considered.
In parallel, in WP3, the cloud computing architecture and storage structure for storing and analysing the data of the CollectionCare system was developed. Also, a graphical user interface (GUI) of the CollectionCare system was designed, where users will finally be able to access all data such as historical and real-time environmental monitoring data of the cultural objects, the resulting risks obtained from the degradation model.
Within WP 4, a low-cost wireless sensor node was designed and developed to monitor environmental parameters such as T, RH, L, UV, AP and V during exhibition, storage, handling and transport of cultural objects.
All the work developed in the previous WPs was integrated, validated and evaluated in WP5 to identify potential problems at an early stage.
Then, demonstration of the CollectionCare (WP6) system was carried out in the 6 different partner museums of the project, covering different types of objects, different types of buildings and spaces, including exhibition, storage, and transport. The staff of these institutions had a very satisfactory experience with the system.
Concerning dissemination, the CollectionCare project was presented through multiple channels to give visibility to the idea of the CollectionCare system and its potential for professionals and scientists in the cultural community. Addressing the research community, CollectionCare was promoted in several conferences in the scientific and conservation community and presented various scientific publications in open access journals. The importance of preventive conservation for society in general has also been one of the priority activities of the project, with the preparation of training materials and the organisation of thematic days for citizens in the consortium's museums.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Through the integration and improvements of the main areas that developed the CollectionCare system, such as degradation models, wireless sensors, big data and cloud computing, CollectionCare project created a powerful decision-making system designed to offer end-users (conservators from museums, collection managers, private collector, etc.) an affordable all-in-one service for the PC of CH objects. It makes environmental monitoring data and degradation predictions of multi-material objects accessible to the vast majority of collections.
Within the field of degradation modelling, the starting point was the existing degradation models, which were extended and adapted to predict the extent of damage that climatic conditions can cause to a specific CH object. This, coupled with the use of the relevant EU PC regulations, allows obtaining, in addition to degradation predictions, PC recommendations for proper conservation. This will significantly impact PC practice within museums, allowing early action to be taken to avoid degradation and, in turn, avoid the high future costs of restoration and/or conservation interventions.
Also, the CollectionCare system benefits from the latest developments in sensor electronics. CollectionCare developed a low-cost wireless sensor node for monitoring environmental parameters such as T, RH, L, UV, AP and V during the exhibition, storage, handling and transport of cultural objects. The device is close to an industrialised version with a battery life of up to 10 years and a wireless communication system that allows it to operate correctly in large, thick-walled spaces. The cost of manufacturing this device is calculated at around €91. This result allows verifying that CollectionCare project achieved a low-cost sensor node and an affordable solution that can be acquired by small-medium-sized museums with reduced budgets for the monitoring of environmental parameters for the conservation of collections.
Furthermore, CollectionCare´s approach is based on the development of a PC computing platform with a big data cloud-agnostic solution that allows to store and analyze all data collected to provide the outputs to the end-users. Using these data allows not only to obtain information on the degradation predictions and PC recommendations but also environmental data that will improve and increase the know-how of the different end-users.

CollectionCare preventive conservation system