Proposal for a new environmental risk assessment methodology in cultural heritage protection

Abstract In this paper, it is proposed a new methodology for the environmental risk assessment in cultural heritage, developed in close collaboration with conservation scientists and library collection managers. This New rIsk assessment methodology for Cultural HEritage protection (NICHE) is specifically addressed to the protection of cultural heritage housed in museums, galleries and archives. At the present stage of development, our proposal can be considered as a “relative risk assessment methodology” for the environmental risks to cultural heritage, as are many other methodologies for the risk assessment of works of art. However, NICHE is grounded in a new general definition of risk; it is inserted in a more general and wider conceptual framework, as far as the definition of risk is concerned. In addition, although it is a relative risk assessment methodology, NICHE takes explicitly into account the effects of microclimatic conditions on the works of art, based on the current scientific knowledge and requirements reported in international norms. Here the NICHE approach is applied to the results of two measurement campaigns carried out in 2014 over two different periods, considered “extreme” from the climatic point of view, in the Classense Library of Ravenna (Italy), a famous historical library which houses many books of great value. In these measurement campaigns, various indoor environments were characterized. Even though we focus our attention mainly on the risks related to effects of the microclimatic environment on the works of art, future extensions to other classes of risks, such as structural, related to usage, arising from natural phenomena (earthquakes, floods, storms…), infesting agents (pests, insects, moulds…), technical malfunctions, etc., can be easily performed. In fact, all situations where the effects of the sources of risk on the targets of interest can be described with an S shaped function (for example, a Dose-Response Curve, a Probit or a Logit models) can be treated with the NICHE approach, grounded in the comparison with threshold reference values reported in the technical/scientific literature and norms.