Regional policies for sustainability in the Mediterranean countries: the role of a proper HVAC system maintenance in museums

Italy, like several Mediterranean countries, holds a very large number of cultural artifacts that are often exhibited and saved inside museums. Museums are usually part of historical buildings that, not rarely, originally had a different intended use and that have been currently transformed in place for conservation and for exhibition of works of art. The use of historical buildings as museums leads to limitations in the management and distribution of exhibition space, in design and managing HVAC systems and in the achievement of targets relating to the continuous monitoring of the microclimate for people comfort and for preservation of works of art. Moreover, the costs of the operation and maintenance of the HVAC system for this particular type of confined environment are often very expensive and the proper optimization of the required operations plays a main role. In this paper, authors propose a new decision support tool for curators regarding the operation and maintenance management of HVAC systems in museums especially in the case of their belonging to cultural heritage buildings.