Potential Impacts of the Research beyond the Academia\nOne of the principal aims of the project is to have a long-standing impact on a large number of heritage sites around the world, especially, but not limited to, countries with emerging economies. For such an ambitious impact plan to be successful, partnerships with managing governments and international institutions are an essential requirement. This is why partnerships with UNESCO, English Heritage and the Government of the Republic of Benin are so important. They provide the assurance that the proposed technological development takes into account the end-user view and that the collected data are not only available, but correctly managed, locally owned, and globally accessible. The proposed development of the polycy framework promoting data collection and local ownership while enabling its sharing, will ensure that the new developments are taken up. The project can contribute to UK competitiveness by exploiting the potential IPR ramifications and commercial usage of the proposed technology at the end of the Fellowship period. Politically, such a British-led research effort to provide a global database of environmental conditions on world heritage can only reinforce UK international leadership on environmental and heritage issues.\n\nEngagement of Users and Beneficiaries\nThe fellowship holder will be responsible for managing and coordinating the working relations between the different partners and the multidisciplinary Advisory Board. The latter is composed of representatives from partner institutions including English Heritage, UNESCO, UCL Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and UCL London Centre for Nanotechnology. \nIn order to secure the impact, the project had to engage a variety of users and beneficiaries already in the planning phase. The overwhelming support is evident from the Departmental Letter of Support, signed by representatives of two UCL Departments, and by the Letters of Support by the English Heritage, the UNESCO and the Government of the Republic of Benin.\nBy dissemination through professional associations, such as the Institute of Conservation, International Council of Museums, International Institute of Conservation, American Institute of Conservation and the Net-Heritage Observatory, the project will maximise its impact nationally and internationally.\n\nMethods for Communication, Engagement, Collaboration and Exploitation\n- Through conferences, the end-user community will be informed of the development of the network of sensor arrays. \n- The non-commercially sensitive knowledge will be disseminated in the form of scientific and expert papers published in appropriate journals. \n- Through development of a self-training module, accessible on-line, the heritage users will be able to update their knowledge and work effectively with the developed support system.\n- Bilingual leaflets will be produced and distributed at heritage sites in UK, Africa and Asia. \n- Meetings and seminars at the heritage sites will be held to engage with the site managers.\n- The project website will enable live access to the monitored data. It will also serve as a dissemination medium. Information on the project description and regular updates on the progress will be presented in different formats, such as reports and multimedia presentations.\n- In the second year of the project, it will be established whether any gained knowledge needs IP protection and suitable measures will be undertaken then. UCL Business (http://www.uclb.com/) will be consulted for advice. \n- The Knowledge Transfer Network 'Sensors and Instrumentation' (www.sensorsktn.com/) will be contacted to liaise with the sensor and sensor network companies.\n- Contacts with companies will be established to explore the possibilities of commercialisation of the developed sensor network kits.
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AH/H032126/1
The interdisciplinary project 'ACCESSIBLE HERITAGE - Remote trans-continental heritage support system' aims to develop and deploy on heritage sites a wireless network of long-life and remote environmental monitoring devices and to develop an associated policy framework promoting local data ownership. \nIn line with the hybrid nature of the project, innovation is on several levels: from a technical point of view, the project will ensure the durability of sensor arrays and their sensitivity to principal ambient pollutants, which has not been achieved before in heritage monitoring. From the point of view of heritage management, one of the principal innovations of the project will be the way how data are owned, accessed, and fed into heritage site management plans. This research will be done in collaboration with the English Heritage partner. Thus, there is clear innovation from the scientific point of view, which is led by heritage questions.\nThe experimental development will include the design and calibration of sensors arrays, including modification to enable direct monitoring of pollutants and climate data. In parallel, a wireless communication device will be developed with a microcontroller to sample the signals and to control the radio communications. A communication protocol to collect sensor data from local devices into a gateway or sink device will be developed, which will feed the data onto the web. The updated sensor data, as well as the history of collected data from several heritage sites across three continents will be available globally on the project website, designed in collaboration with heritage partners.\nThe deployments are scheduled within the three year duration of the fellowship programme. The selected sites are in UK, Africa and Asia in collaboration with English Heritage and UNESCO. The availability of such data will enable us to monitor and analyse the heritage climate and to implement the findings in view of the threats imposed by climate change. There is a real potential for the network to grow beyond the lifetime of the project thus maximising its impact and legacy of the programme. \nThe project host organisation is University College London (UCL) with three collaborating departments: UCL Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and UCL London Centre for Nanotechnology, while the project will be based at UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage. The project partners include English Heritage, which will play a key role in issues related to policy development, data ownership and access to data, especially in the international context. The Government of the Republic of Benin has expressed its support, while a representative of UNESCO World Heritage Centre (East Asia and the Pacific Unit) will act in an advisory capacity.\n
ACCESSIBLE HERITAGE - Remote trans-continental heritage support system
http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk:80/projects?ref=AH%2FH032126%2F1
ACCESSIBLE HERITAGE - Remote trans-continental heritage support system