Environmental Conditions Monitoring Using Wireless Sensors for the Conservation of Museum Exhibits: The Case of the Tsitsanis Museum in Trikala, Greece

Museums are responsible for maintaining stable and appropriate indoor climate conditions for their artifacts and visitors. However, the microclimate of museums is often adjusted for visitors' comfort, disregarding the guidelines and standards suggested in literature for the proactive conservation of exhibits. Temperature and humidity imbalances caused by heating, air conditioning, ventilating systems, air exchange with outdoors, building structures, and high visitor traffic pose imminent risk factors. To address this issue, museums must adopt innovative, non-invasive, and cost-effective technologies to monitor environmental parameters and minimize negative impacts. This work presents a wireless sensor network solution for monitoring the temperature and relative humidity affecting the microclimate of the Tsitsanis Museum in Trikala, Greece, dedicated to the great Greek composer Vassilis Tsitsanis. The methodology applied for the monitoring process takes into account the location, building structure, and exhibits. The small-sized sensing nodes perform measurements with a specified time step and the sensory data are uploaded via a Wi-Fi connection to a cloud platform. The acquired data are accessible continuously and in real-time for closely analyzing changes in these parameters and avoiding unfavorable environmental conditions that can cause deterioration and damage to exhibits. The evaluation results indicate that the solution performs satisfactorily in terms of functionality, computational performance, consistency, and efficiency.