Interior insulation plays a key role in reducing the energy consumption of historic buildings. However, it might cause moisture accumulation
and must be thoroughly analyzed. The use of recycled materials allows for further reduction of environmental impact. This paper presents
the study of a new insulating plaster containing aerogel and recycled glass used as capillary active interior insulation system. Firstly, the
hygrothermal properties of the material are measured in laboratory to obtain a complete characterization. Laboratory tests results are post-
processed to obtain the data required as input by the simulation software. Finally, hygrothermal simulations are carried out to investigate
the material’s behavior in realistic application scenarios and to study how different input parameters affect the results.

Humidity, salt content, and migration in building materials lead to weathering and are a common challenge. To understand damage phenomena and select the right conservation treatments, knowledge on both the amount and distribution of moisture and salt load in the masonry is crucial. It was shown that commercial portable devices addressing moisture are often limited by the mutual interference of these values. This can be improved by exploiting broadband radar reflectometry for the quantification of humidity in historic masonry. Due to the above-mentioned limitations, today’s gold standard for evaluating the moisture content in historic buildings is still conducted by taking drilling samples with a subsequent evaluation in a specially designed laboratory, the so-called Darr method. In this paper, a new broadband frequency approach in the range between 0.4 and 6 GHz with improved artificial-intelligence data analysis makes sure to optimize the reflected signal, simplify the evaluation of the generated data, and minimise the effects of variables such as salt contamination that influence the permittivity. In this way, the amount of water could be determined independently from the salt content in the material and an estimate of the salt load. With new machine learning algorithms, the analysis of the permittivity is improved and can be made accessible for everyday use on building sites with minimal intervention by the user. These algorithms were trained with generated data from different drying studies on single building bricks from the masonries. The findings from the laboratory studies were then validated and evaluated on real historic buildings at real construction sites. Thus, the paper shows a spatially resolved and salt-independent measurement system for determining building moisture.

Kulturelle Bildung – ein Containerbegriff, welcher mit verschiedensten Merkmalen assoziiert ist. Wie verstehen lokale Akteur*innen Kulturelle Bildung, und wie kann dies zur Begriffsschärfung bezüglich der Strukturen, Angebote, Dimensionen und Wirkung Kultureller Bildung beitragen?
Für eine erste Annäherung an diese Frage wurden 34 Akteur*innen aus verschiedenen Sektoren Kultureller Bildung aus der Region und Stadt Coburg in leitfadengestützten Expert*inneninterviews befragt und die Interviews mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse ausgewertet. Die Ergebnisse geben einen Überblick über die Perspektive lokaler Akteur*innen auf die aktuelle Lage Kultureller Bildung in der Stadt und Region Coburg (Oberfranken), auf Wirkpotenziale sowie Vernetzungs- und Förderbedarfe. Der besondere Zeitpunkt der Erhebung (August – Dezember 2020) ermöglicht darüber hinaus Einblicke in die Kulturelle Bildung während der COVID-19 Pandemie, beschreibt diesbezügliche Veränderungen und hinterfragt diese kritisch.  Darüber hinaus setzt die differenziert kategorisierende Analyse von Begriffsverständnissen, Strukturen und Dimensionen aus der Perspektive lokaler Akteur*innen Impulse für zukünftige, auch konturiert quantifizierende Forschung im Feld der Kulturellen Bildung.

Experts from the IEA SHC Task 59 and the Interreg project, ATLAS, make available a range of more than 130 energy retrofit solutions for historic buildings – via the best practice collection in the HiBERatlas and the online decision guidance of the HiBERtool.

The reliability of hygrothermal simulations of building components is key for designing energy efficiency measures, assessing living comfort, and preventing building damage. The model accuracy is related to the reliability of the selection of input parameters. Due to the high uncertainty, the selection of the input values is challenging. This work aims to calibrate a hygrothermal simulation model exploiting monitored values recorded in a case study located in Settequerce (Italy), to understand how close to reality a numerical model can be. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis, based on the Morris method together with a Latin Hypercube sampling, is applied to identify the input parameters that affect most significantly the simulation. The results of the calibration indicated that is possible to obtain reliable outputs by appropriately selecting materials within the database. The sensitivity analysis showed that the relative humidity under the insulation is largely influenced by the water vapor diffusion resistance factor of the plaster, applied during the renovation phase both on the internal and external side. Among the coefficients describing the coupling with the boundary conditions, only the external convective heat coefficient and the coefficient of short-wave solar radiation influence slightly the objective function.

Digitalisation and digital technologies present a great opportunity for Heritage Conservation, particularly regarding our Built Heritage and its sustainable use. Professionals are needed who can understand and quantify the complex physical processes required with the help of digital tools and will collaborate with their analysis to interdisciplinary dialogue before any conservation-related decision is made.