About our client
The Historical Archive of the Generalitat de Catalunya, known as the “Arxiu Històric de la Generalitat de Catalunya” in Catalan, is responsible for preserving and making accessible historical records related to the government and administration of Catalonia. This archive contains a vast collection of documents that cover various periods in Catalonia’s history, including its medieval and modern history, as well as more recent records.
Main building of the National archive of Catalunya. Source: Gencat.cat
In 1995 the National Archive of Catalonia moved to Sant Cugat del Vallès. The current building has a surface of 12,625 square meters and the possibility to store 62 kilometres of shelves with documents.
Its architect, Josep Benedito i Rovira, designed a functional construction divided in four major blocs connected by a courtyard. Most of spaces are used as deposits, and other as administration offices, conservation laboratories and different facilities. As the National Archive of Catalonia holds high-value documents, modern safety conditions were introduced to guarantee the right conservation of the collections.
PROBLEM TO SOLVE / TASK
Environmental conditions play a key role in the proper storage of documents. Improper and quickly changing temperature and humidity conditions may result in degradation of the stored documents over time. The investor was looking for a solution that allows real-time monitoring and alarming, when the desired conditions in the archive are not met. Moreover, the investor wanted to be able to analyse the behaviour of these parameters using charts.
The deployed devices should not use archive’s internal network infrastructure and should be wireless, as they may be moved around the archive’s rooms over time.
Historical Archive of the Generalitat de Catalunya was looking for a solution that would allow monitoring of the environmental conditions in the archive’s rooms.
SOLUTION
The investor decided to pick the solution proposed by ControlTemp – the environmental conditions monitoring system based on NB-IoT loggers and Efento Cloud platform.
The archive’s rooms are monitored by 30 NB-IoT loggers. Each of the devices is equipped with a SIM cards. The data plan cost is low compared to traditional GSM connectivity -approximately EUR 19 for 5 years of data transfer. After this period, the cards can be remotely renewed for another period.
NB-IoT loggers transmit the measurements data by base stations, and then the data is forwarded to Efento Cloud platform.
Efento Cloud is a platform that allows you to collect, analyse and visualise sensor data, generate reports out of it and notify users, if the values measured by the sensors are out of the safe range. Efento Cloud works with all Efento sensors, no matter what communication technology they use. Platform offers webhooks and RESTful API, which can be used to easily integrate it with any third party software. Users can access Efento Cloud through a web browser or a mobile application.
A fragment of the report available on the Efento cloud platform
The key benefits from implementing the environmental monitoring system based on NB-IoT loggers and Efento Cloud include:
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- Remote access to the measurements – users can access the temperature measurements through a web panel or with a free Efento mobile application.
- Notifications – when the defined alarm thresholds are exceeded, notifications are sent via e-mail, SMS or as a push message in the mobile application.
- Long maintenance free operations – batteries ensure up to a few years of maintenance free operation
- Remote configuration – sensor’s configuration can be changed remotely from the cloud platform
Efento NB-IoT Logger installed in the archive
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