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

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