Monitoring heritage buildings and artworks with Wireless Sensor Networks

Environmental monitoring is a crucial activity for preserving frescoes, historical structures, paintings, and artworks hosted both in exhibitions and storage rooms. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) offer an unique opportunity for a pervasive and continuous tracking of microclimate conditions in historical buildings, where frescoed walls often refrain the deployment of data cables and electrical wires. Moreover, rising real-time alarms when environmental conditions are out of range, a WSN can have an active role in protecting and preserving the cultural heritage. To this aim, a new sensor network for indoor environmental monitoring has been developed in cooperation with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici per le province di Mantova, Brescia e Cremona and the proposed system has been deployed within the Alcova room of the Ducal Palace, Mantua. This article describes the main features of the developed monitoring system, as well as the results obtained from the testbed and the problems that need to be addressed when deploying a network within historical structures.