Veerle Meul, advisor historic interiors

MAKSin, a recording system for conservation assessments

Risk- and value-based priorty ranking in historic interiors Inauguration Unesco Chair on Preventive Conservation, Maintenance and Monitoring of Monuments and Sites

Raymond Lemaire International Center for Conservation, University of Louvain Louvain, Belgium, 24-25 March 2009

Conservation assessments of the historic interior

Condition survey

Currently  Visual survey, ‘quickscan’: material state and damage  Baseline (reference) report (benchmark)  Record of the extent and condition of an interior, damage

Preventive conservation assessment

Identification and assessment of agents of deterioration 10 agents of deterioration (CCI-ICC, Waller and ICCROM):           Fire Water Wrong relative humidity Wrong temperature Physical forces Light and radiation Pests Contaminants Dissociation/neglect Vandals and thieves

Problem

The report

Conservation assessment report:

  Aim: document to support local conservation management planning Recommendations with long list of activities  Advice for housekeeping and cyclic maintenance planning, mostly standard good-practice advices  List of strategies to avoid, to detect, to block, or to mitigate the effects of possible harmful agents  Long list of remedial conservation activities, only those to be done by specialists are ranked in order of urgency (ambiguous judgment by assessor)

Selecting conservation priorities

Problem

Complexity

What to do first?

2006 Problem: methodology

Current state versus future loss

2009

2 months later… Problem

Current state versus future loss

Toolbox approach

Integrated methodologies Source Exposure On-going Damage State Past damage Cause Exposure Attack Consequence

Risk assessment Environmental monitoring Dosimetry & EWS Condition assessment Damage assessment

2007-2009: Project MAKSin

Tool: recording system

MAKSin Monumentenwacht

Priority ranking

Decision-making matrix

Decision-making matrix with 4 parameters:

RISK-based (principles ‘Cultural Heritage Risk Assessment’, as developed by ICCROM, CCI-ICC, CMN, ICN) A. Speed of continual decay processes; the frequency of incidents; probability of disasters B. Effect of consequential damage of defects (condition survey) OR of future damage by the agents of deterioration (risk assessment) C. Health and safety indicator VALUE-based D. Relative importance of the parts affected

End