On 28 and 29 April 2016 a colloquium will be hosted on preventive conservation methods that are based upon the principle that deterioration and damage to works of art can be controlled or slowed down by managing the environmental conditions under which collections are housed and safeguarded.
The project is a collaboration between the University of Antwerp, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History.
For more information on the project and the program of the colloquium, please see the pages about Airchecq on the University’s website.
From the website of the conference, 23 February 2016
National and international experts will present overviews about current evolutions, challenging case studies and new possibilities of state-of-the-art monitoring systems. The presentation of the midterm results of the AIRCHECQ (Air Identification & Registration for Cultural Heritage: Enhancing Climate Quality) project is used as an opportunity to organize this colloquium about advanced measuring tools, improved methods and new concepts for preventive conservation.
The colloquium seeks for answers on the following questions:
- How to measure air aggressiveness?
- How to calculate the IAQ-index from the measurements?
- How to evaluate the collection’s sensitivity?
- How to mitigate the IAQ for mixed collections?
The AIRCHECQ project focuses on the (real-time) monitoring of the air aggressiveness. This is realized by measuring simultaneously environmental parameters (e.g., temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration, air flow, pollution) and the behavior of materials (e.g., corrosion rate of metal sensors, dimensional changes of wooden objects).
The data will be summarized into one single value: the indoor air quality (IAQ) index. This IAQ index not only incorporates the measurement data: it also includes the sensitivity of the collection (e.g., risk assessment). The IAQ index enables us to develop graphical and intuitive-friendly tools that allow heritage caretakers to manage the indoor air quality (IAQ) themselves. In addition, the performance of several mitigating actions will be evaluated by studying the evolution of the IAQ-index induced by the measures.