Sensor System Design and Deployment for Environmental and Visitor Monitoring in Cultural Heritage Sites

In this paper the design, development, and validation of a set of low power, low-cost sensor systems intended for environmental monitoring and visitor tracking in cultural heritage sites is shown. These systems have been deployed in 5 pilot cases in 4 different countries in Europe inside the European ARGUS project. Two different approaches have been defined in the design: the static systems installed in fixed positions and the dynamic systems installed in a moving robot i.e., a quadruped robot or a drone. The Baltanás pilot site has served as the primary testing platform, enabling accelerated prototyping and iterative improvement before deployment across additional pilot locations. This paper presents the design criteria, system architectures, and performance evaluation of these sensor networks, including thermal–humidity probes, volumetric water content sensors, wind measurement systems, pollution monitors, and two generations of visitor counting devices.