Monitoring cultural heritage buildings via low-cost edge computing/sensing platforms: The Biblioteca Joanina de Coimbra case study

Climate change and higher level of pollutants are affecting our heritage affect the conservation abilities and endangering centuries old buildings and artifacts. Governments and conservation agencies alike are scrambling to monitor and prevent disasters that would result in the loss of precious cultural artifacts. Sensing technologies, on one side, and new restoration techniques on the other, are in being used in this effort however they result in high costs and complex installation logistics. In this paper we present a pollution monitoring study for the Biblioteca Joanina, a baroque library situated in University of Coimbra that has been inducted in the UNESCO world’s heritage list in 2013. In contrast with current practices the study has been conducted using a low-cost sensing platform, namely CANARIN II, built in a joint effort by the Sorbonne Université, the Macao Polytechnic Institute and the Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand). Our study shows that is possible to use low-cost platform for cultural heritage monitoring and preservation and how it can support decision makers in execute simple policy changes and yet achieve substantial impacts in the preservation efforts.