British Museum Environmental Monitoring System

The British Museum (the Museum) uses an Environmental Monitoring System (EMS) to monitor environmental conditions that have the potential to damage the collection (including temperature, relative humidity, luminescence, and UV). This covers all sites where the collection is stored and exhibited, both on the Museum's estate (three UK locations) and offsite (e.g. in transit).

As the Museum's current EMS is approaching the end of its support period for the heritage sector, the Museum is looking to introduce a new EMS. An effective EMS is needed to comply with the UK's museum accreditation scheme and to align with the Museum's collection preservation policies.

The EMS consists of both hardware and software. Currently, sensors capture and transmit environmental monitoring information to receivers, which subsequently upload this information to on-premises data storage.

This information can then be remotely accessed and managed using the EMS software. The Museum is seeking to understand the ability of suppliers to deliver a solution that provides this critical environmental monitoring capability, whilst minimising operational disruption. The future EMS solution shall provide wireless hardware for capturing environmental monitoring data, infrastructure to upload and store this data, and software to view and manage this data.