۱- Introduction

۲- Related work

۳- Requirements analysis

۴- IoT for CH architecture proposal

۵- Evaluation of the nodes

۶- Conclusions and future work

References

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies can facilitate the preventive conservation of cultural heritage (CH) by enabling the management of data collected from electronic sensors. This work presents an IoT architecture for this purpose. Firstly, we discuss the requirements from the artwork standpoint, data acquisition, cloud processing and data visualization to the end user. The results presented in this work focuses on the most critical aspect of the architecture, which are the sensor nodes. We designed a solution based on LoRa and Sigfox technologies to produce the minimum impact in the artwork, achieving a lifespan of more than 10 years. The solution will be capable of scaling the processing and storage resources, deployed either in a public or on-premise cloud, embedding complex predictive models. This combination of technologies can cope with different types of cultural heritage environments.

Introduction

Modern societies tend towards a globalized world with many challenges. One priority is to defend and promote the particular aspects of native cultures in each region and country. Culture is expressed in multiple ways such as art, linguistic aspects or architecture. Cultural Heritage (CH) has an important value that must be promoted and safeguarded for future generations, because the deterioration or destruction of artworks is a serious loss that cannot be recovered in many cases. Also, CH is a source of wealth as it promotes tourism, creative art and native culture. Millions of tourists choose their destination every year based on the artistic and cultural interest of the places visited, such as monuments, museums, exhibitions, historical villages, ruins, etc. The protection and conservation of CH is an issue of particular interest because every artwork undergoes certain deterioration with time. Such degradation depends on the type of material, the action of external weather conditions and human factors. The ideal is to keep artworks under stable and controlled climatic scenarios, which should be properly monitored and registered, but such conditions are often achieved only in museums. The use of controlled atmospheres can be necessary in some cases in order to avoid oxidation (e.g., the Turin Shroud or the US Declaration of Independence). Light-sensitive artworks also require special environments. Nevertheless, in most cases, reasonable conditions are achieved with an appropriate control of temperature and relative humidity (RH) [1]. As a previous step for deciding the best alternative for a microclimate control system, it is necessary to record and monitor the ambient conditions around artworks, particularly in the case of historical buildings. This approach is useful to assess deterioration risks and evaluate the susceptibility of any artworks kept in these places.