Case Study: Politecnico di Milano achieves remote environmental monitoring to protect Roman ruins with Microsoft Power BI

Politecnico di Milano - Customer Case Study

Politecnico di Milano, a leading technical university, was asked to help archaeologists remotely monitor the Mitreo, an underground Mithraic temple beneath Rome’s Circus Maximus. With physical access limited, the team needed an automated way to measure humidity, temperature, soil moisture, CO2, light and ground movement; they selected Microsoft Azure as the IoT platform and used Microsoft Power BI for visualization.

Using Azure IoT Hub, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure SQL Database and Azure App Service together with Microsoft Power BI, Politecnico di Milano deployed sensors that send about 1 KB of telemetry every 30 minutes to the cloud for processing and live reporting. The Microsoft Power BI dashboards let archaeologists quickly filter by metric and time window, revealing near‑condensing humidity levels and poor airflow—findings that led to immediate conservation actions (requesting a second entrance) and demonstrated a scalable, low‑cost IoT solution ready for reuse at other sites.

Politecnico di Milano

Luca Mottola

Associate Professor