Dashboard

The ArtRatio Dashboard is an online HTML5 app, which can be accessed on any device connected to the public Internet.

The app calculates the light exposure, visibility and risk of deterioration on art and luxury collections, based on their material sensitivities as well as environmental and display parameters.

1. Select up to three materials present on the object and add them to the list. You can click a previously chosen material to remove it.

2. The material sensitivities for temperature, humidity and light will be automatically chosen based on your chosen materials. If you chose more than one, the software will find the most sensitive material for each environmental category. You can override this at any time.

3. In the Environment section, the maxima and minima will also be chosen automatically based on the chosen materials. You can override these at any time.

4. Now enter the current values for temperature, humidity and light.

5. In the Display section, enter the display parameters. If you are not sure, leave them as they are.

6. Now click Update.

7. The Dashboard section will show updated values for the gauges for various parameters of interest. Green indicates a safe region, whereas red indicates an area of risk.

8. Visibility: indicates whether a user can visualise the object in photopic vision (green) or in scotopic vision (red) where it will be difficult to see fine details and colours.

9. Risk of Damage: Our proprietary algorithm looks at the above data and lifts out an index of risk, where the green region indicates low risk, and red indicates high risk.

Up to 3 at the moment, although we are working on being able to add more. 

All data is referenced from the British Standards Institute Specification document BSI PAS 198:2012. Although this document has now been superseded by a combination of (i) BS EN 16893:2018, (ii) BS EN 15999-1:2014 and (iii) BS 4971:2017, the essential science remains the same. 

Light exposure is the product of illuminance and the duration, hence it has units of Lux.Hours / Year. If you can imagine the light levels varying during the course of a day, you would see a graph with a wavy line indicating the light levels, right? Well, the light exposure is the area under the graph (technically, the time-integral) and represents the total energy impacting the object in question.

This should be readily available from your glass processor or the manufacturer of the display case.

Same story. Please ask your glass processor, or the manufacturer of the display case. They should be able to supply you with figures for ultraviolet (UV) rejection, including the wavelength range which is blocked by the glass, e.g. 99% rejection over 300nm to 380nm.

We refer to the light level inside the display case, preferably taken by a light (or lux) sensor with its head located horizontally and placed as close as possible to the object on display. Most light meters for the heritage sector display output in Lux, as do most museum-related standards.

The object reflectance determines the amount of light that the user receives from the object. If enough light is received by the user, the object can be viewed in photopic vision which allows perception of fine details and colours. If not, the human eye goes into ‘low light mode’ (scotopic vision), where it is difficult to view fine details or colours.

Most museum-related standards like BSI PAS 198 and CIE 157 state all light levels in Lux (lumens per sq. metre), whereas the more correct units would be in Watts per sq. metre. This is a convention that we feel we must adhere to in order to not confuse the museum / arts sector. Many light sensors on the market also display light levels in photometric units by default.