The good conservation of cultural patrimony depends on the quality of the indoor environment where collections and artifacts are kept, being suspended particles one of the key parameters. Among the various methods to study indoor pollution, portable optical counters appear as effective instruments to measure indoor pollution due to their specifications (low visual and acoustic impact). However, it is still one of the least common approaches when assessing the conservation quality in heritage buildings. Therefore, the present study focuses on developing a methodology that uses portable particle counters to monitor particulate matter inside historic buildings and assess indoor conservation quality. Long-term and spatial analyses were conducted using this type of equipment to identify causes of pollution in a case study, the Joanina Library in Coimbra, Portugal. Estimation of night concentrations was carried out as a complementary approach to the monitoring. A new conservation method of classifying indoor pollution was proposed as an alternative to the most common standards. This classification determines four conservation classes (A, B, C, and D) according to particulate matter and the respective percentage of time that measurements are within such classes. As a result, the measurements showed a poor indoor environment quality meeting the requirements of low-level classes, which are those with a greater risk of degradation (Classes C and D). The continuous long-term campaign of four years was decisive for the identification of the main sources and environmental conditions of higher pollution: the exterior pavement, the number of tourists, the use of carpets, and the absence of rain. The spatial results depend on the diameters of the particles and the space's height where the assessment is made. Thus, this type of device and the developed methodology could be used by curators as an effective tool for long-term and spatial assessment in this building typology.

This paper follows a bibliometric assessment methodology to provide a systematic review of studies devoted to cultural heritage (CH) buildings that simultaneously refer to hygrothermal conditions and/or behavior and climate change (CC) scenarios. Moreover, this paper aims at identifying the main research trend and research gaps in this combined research field, and to provide a critical discussion of previous works relating to CH, hygrothermal behavior, and CC. Scopus database was used for data gathering and export, followed by VOSviewer for network visualization. The advanced search on the database showed that only 36 documents have considered the study of these three subjects together, as of 2022. The majority of research has been carried out in Italy (27% of the relevant documents). This paper further describes some funded research projects on the topic of CH, hygrothermal behavior, and CC. It was concluded that the investigation on this combined research topic is very recent and scarcely unexplored, and further research is required to assess how future CC scenarios will affect the hygrothermal behavior of CH buildings. These new understandings are fundamental for all stakeholders involved in topics related to heritage conservation and assessment of the hygrothermal behavior of buildings.

Glazed systems in buildings can account for a significant part of overall energy consumption. The unfavorable relationship between energy savings and the increased cost of energy-efficient windows is often the main drawback cited by customers to justify its non-acquisition. of glazed windows. This study addresses the relationship between the investment costs in windows and their energy performance and associated costs. Seventeen window manufacturers were contacted. This survey studied the state-of-the-art and the most-used windows in terms of energy efficiency and cost. Calumen and Guardian Configurator software were used to perform this assessment. Additionally, SEnergEd software was used to simulate the energy performance and compute the equivalent annual cost for the entire life cycle of buildings. Besides the economic benefits, the impact of the energy performance of the windows on the energy performance of the building was also studied. In terms of energy, the most efficient glazing system was two windows per span, resulting in a combined solar factor of 0.43 and a 0.55 W/(m²·K) heat-transfer coefficient. On the other hand, one window per span, with a solar factor of 0.79 and a 3.05 W/(m² K) heat-transfer coefficient is the most cost-efficient to be used in Portugal.