Climate for Culture: assessing the impact of climate change on the future indoor climate in historic buildings using simulations

Abstract

Background: The present study reports results from the large-scale integrated EU project "Climate for Culture". The full name, or title, of the project is Climate for Culture: damage risk assessment, economic impact and mitigation strategies for sustainable preservation of cultural heritage in times of climate change. This paper focusses on implementing high resolution regional climate models together with new building simulation tools in order to predict future outdoor and indoor climate conditions. The potential impact of gradual climate change on historic buildings and on the vast collections they contain has been assessed. Two moderate IPCC emission scenarios A1B and RCP 4.5 were used to predict indoor climates in historic buildings from the recent past until the year 2100. Risks to the building and to the interiors with valuable artifacts were assessed using damage functions. A set of generic building types based on data from existing buildings were used to transfer outdoor climate conditions to indoor conditions using high resolution climate projections for Europe and the Mediterranean. Results:The high resolution climate change simulations have been performed with the regional climate model REMO over the whole of Europe including the Mediterranean region. Whole building simulation tools and a simplified building model were developed for historic buildings; they were forced with high resolution climate simulations. This has allowed maps of future climate-induced risks for historic buildings and their interiors to be produced. With this procedure future energy demands for building control can also be calculated. Conclusion:With the newly developed method described here not only can outdoor risks for cultural heritage assets resulting from climate change be assessed, but also risks for indoor collections. This can be done for individual buildings as well as on a larger scale in the form of European risk maps. By using different standardized and exemplary artificial buildings in modelling climate change impact, a comparison between different regions in Europe has become possible for the first time. The methodology will serve heritage owners and managers as a decision tool, helping them to plan more effectively mitigation and adaption measures at various levels.

Adapting Cultural Heritage to Climate Change Risks: Perspectives of Cultural Heritage Experts in Europe

“…Previous studies have focused on assessing the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage sites in Europe [1][2][3][4][5]15], with limited research on adaptation. Efforts in the area of adaptation are yet limited to the dissemination of guidelines and recommendations for implementing adaptation measures [1,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], the identification of the determinants of adaptive capacity [26], and the identification of the barriers to adaptation [27][28][29][30].…”

“…An increase in temperature together with changes in precipitation, relative humidity, and wind, for instance, can negatively impact on the materials comprising cultural heritage assets. This is because a change in average climatic conditions as well as changes in the frequency and intensity of severe weather events can affect the biological, chemical, and physical mechanisms leading to degradation of the assets [1][2][3][4][5]. This includes an increase in the freeze-thaw cycle in northern Europe, extreme heat and droughts in the Mediterranean region, the overall decrease in summer precipitation in Europe, and an increase in winter storms and heavy precipitation events in the Atlantic region.…”

An assessment of moisture induced damage in Blickling Hall in Norfolk, England, via environmental monitoring

“…Despite the abundance of studies focusing on benchmarking of minimum temperature and humidity conditions that may result in an onset of mould formation on different building materials (e.g. [26][27][28]), different values were reported for the minimum RH values that govern and possibly trigger the onset of the mould growth, if no other information is available: 70% [29], 75% [28,30], and 80% [31]. As the relative humidity increases, the temperature that should accompany it for an onset of mould growth decreases.…”

Towards Zero-Emission Refurbishment of Historic Buildings: A Literature Review

“…About 54% of these documents (n = 26) describe methodological approaches that deal with intervention processes, while 31% of them (n = 15) focus on energy-retrofit measures and energy-efficiency evaluation after the refurbishment process (e.g., [24][25][26][27]). Four publications (8%) present conservation methods that take into account the effects of future climate-change scenarios [28,29] and the evaluation of microclimate conditions [30,31] in the building. Finally, two documents primarily focus on the carbon footprint calculation after intervention [32,33], and one publication discusses the methodology in the decision making process [34].…”