RISK ASSESSMENT APPLIED TO A MINERAL COLLECTION

In this work a risk assessment approach was applied to the mineralogical collection at the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. This collection is in a historical building dated from the 17th century and rebuilt in the 19th century, which had suffered from a major fire (in 1978) that destroyed two-thirds of the mineral collection. There are also other risks affecting this collection and it is not simple to decide which are the most pressing. Consequently, an approach to establishing priorities and planning improvements is imperative. The semi-quantitative Cultural Property Risk Analysis Model was applied to this collection. The magnitude of the specific risks for this mineral collection was calculated to provide a well-informed decision making, taking into account the type of mitigation strategies possible to implement in a historical building. The major hazards affecting this collection were: physical forces, fire, pollutants, light, and incorrect relative humidity. Some of the mitigation actions proposed involved finishing repacking all minerals with padded supports, conduct treatment and encapsulating RH-sensitive specimens in microclimate conditions, improve showcase insulation, reduce illuminance in the exhibition. Although this work was applied to a specific mineral collection, many other natural history museums suffer from similar risks as the ones reported in this work.