Institut für Konservierung und Restaurierung
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970 5193 6474
Climate change is one of the most important global challenges of our time. Although
many studies have been conducted to explore its impact on e.g. biodiversity and agriculture, little is known as to whether
and to what extent climate change influences cultural heritage assets.
Against this background,
the EU-funded "Climate for Culture" project (2009-2014) has investigated the potential impact of changing climate conditions
on historic buildings and the collections they contain as well as on the future energy demand in Europe and the Mediterranean.
Art objects are often very sensitive to variations in humidity and temperature. The main innovation was to use a combination
of simulation and modelling tools to predict more accurately the influence of changing outdoor climate on the indoor and microclimate
in historic buildings until 2100. Further, future energy demand for climatisation of historic buildings was calculated. By
using an automated procedure an assessment of the damage potential in various climate zones was performed. In order to assess
the damage potential of these future climatic conditions, a set of damage functions has been applied to four categories of
objects (sculptures, panel paintings, furniture and paper manuscripts). Furthermore, sensitive glass sensors developed within
the EU project AMECP (1993-1996) have been used in “Climate for Culture” to assess the corrosive damage potential of current
outdoor and indoor climates at the case study sites. Glass sensors act in an integrating way as dosimeters, i.e. they monitor
the combined corrosive effects (in the present case, of temperature and humidity) on a longer time scale as well as daily
fluctuations.
