Preventive maintenance of historical buildings in European countries – analysis of selected examples

Jolanta Sroczyńska

doi:10.37190/arc220205

Abstract

Architectural heritage, due to its material nature, is extremely sensitive to factors contributing to its degradation. Preventive conservation is currently the best way to protect the material authenticity of heritage and is well established in archaeology and museology. The protection of immovable heritage still lacks a proper understanding of this type of action. The article presents a few selected examples of the application of such a method of historic preservation in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and the region bordering France, Spain and Portugal. Several years of positive experience from such initiatives is reason enough to implement similar measures in Poland as well. Dissemination of knowledge of preemptive actions, which will allow the preparation of appropriate safeguards for the monument even before the threat occurs, is undoubtedly the most optimal solution. However, it is necessary to properly assist owners of monuments to provide them not only with additional funds for the ongoing maintenance of buildings, but also with a more complete and reliable knowledge about the vulnerability of a given building to various types of degradation. Modern historic preservation should replace the previous reactive approach with planned preventive maintenance.

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Jolanta Sroczyńska*

Preventive maintenance of historical buildings in European countries

– analysis of selected examples

Introduction

The lack of sucient interest among preservationists in

the preventive protection of historic architecture can be

explained by the complexity of calculations and analyses

within a single discipline and the need for an interdisciplin-

ary approach. Andrzej Tomaszewski, a great advocate of

this type of activity, perhaps most aptly commented on the

problem, noting that preventive protection is […] so di-

cult with regard to architectural monuments and their com-

plexes that the problem is generally not raised [1, p. 264].

The three basic principles of preventive protection for-

mulated for the conservation of museum collections, such

as not interfering with the historic substance, securing the

optimal microclimate of the surroundings and ensuring con-

tinuous monitoring of the condition of the monument, are

most often realized in the case of the protection of archi-

tectural monuments only with regard to monitoring. Mod-

ications to historic buildings are inevitable, as their use

requires adaptation to new functional needs and to current

building regulations. It is also necessary to ensure stable and

optimal environmental conditions for immovable heritage.

In addition to climatic disasters – which have recently

become increasingly frequent in previously unthreatened

areas – there are such factors as intensive urbanization,

environmental pollution, overpopulation, etc. All this has

a destructive eect on the state of preservation of the

his toric substance, and it is only possible to regulate the

strength of the impact of the risk factors of loss of historic

va lues to a very limited extent.

The article is the result of the author’s research on the

analysis of the risk of losing the historic value of historic

buildings. Most researchers agree with the statement that

the optimal method of protecting architectural monuments

is preventive conservation. Nevertheless, in practice (es-

pecially in Poland), the risk of threats to a building is rare-

ly studied, and consequently, buildings are not protected

in advance against potential dangers.

Preventive protection of architectural monuments as

a method of conservation has only recently begun to form

its own set of rules of conduct and a description of tech-

niques and tools to slow down the natural process of de-

struction of the historic substance.

The purpose of the presentation of selected examples

of practical solutions already used in an increasing num-

ber of European countries is to draw attention of the Pol-

ish conservation community and owners and managers of

historic buildings to the need to change the current ap-

proach to the strategy of managing historic buildings. This

is because the individual works necessary for preventive

conservation can be properly planned and carried out in

stages, which not only results in better protection of the

monument, but is also associated with much lower nan-

cial outlays than in the case of repair of damage following

an attack of threat factors.

Definition of the concept and state

of research

It is widely accepted that preventive conservation is any

measure that prevents damage or reduces the possibility of

its occurrence. In the scientic literature, the denition of

preventive conservation for architectural heritage is still

in its formative stages. According to Koenraad van Balen

– director of the UNESCO Chair for Preventive Conser-

vation – inspiration for it should be sought in medicine

[2, p. 100]. Preventive conservation is complementary to

typical conservation work, and both should be integrat-

ORCID:

0000-0002-2782-7564. Faculty of Architecture, Cracow

University of Technology, Poland, e-mail: jsroczyn@pk.edu.pl

DOI: 10.37190/arc220205

Published in open access. CC BY NC ND license

52 Jolanta Sroczyńska

ed into a system for promoting and supporting “heritage

health”. This approach guarantees better results, lower

maintenance costs for the monument and increased pub-

lic involvement in the preservation process. Stefano della

Torre, an international expert in the eld of conservation of

architectural monuments, denes the concept as […] a set

of actions useful for reducing risk situations concerning

cultural assets in their context [3, p. 112]. The author fol-

lows the denition in Italy’s most recent preservation law,

from 2004. Most researchers agree that, regardless of the

denition, the essence of this type of preservation lies in

the application of the least destructive intervention to the

building, thanks to the identication, assessment, analy-

sis of the state of preservation, value and potential risks

threatening the monument carried out beforehand, and the

regular monitoring of the building and its surroundings.

The goal of these interventions is to properly implement

a restoration program and to safeguard against potential

damage from identied risk factors.

The thought of protecting cultural heritage from deg-

radation and destruction in order to save it for posterity

has accompanied people for a long time. Many histori-

cal treatises, manuals and regulations on the protection of

buildings and works of art from re, water, earthquakes

or insects have been preserved. We can learn about the

history of preventive conservation through several pub-

lications by Simon Lambert [4], Jane Henderson [5], or

the excellent monograph Historical Perspectives on Pre-

ventive Conservation, published by the Getty Institute in

2013 [6]. Modern research into preventive conservation

of museum collections began in the 1960s. Among the

many publications on the subject is the 2011 monograph

Preventive Conservation in Museum, which presents a ho-

listic approach to various ideas and concepts, including

issues related to risk analysis and various methods used

in conservation practice to ensure the best possible con-

ditions for preserving exhibits [7]. At the same time, it is

worth noting that research on preventive conservation of

architectural heritage has been conducted for a short time.

The rst attempts to directly transfer the principles of

preventive conservation from the protection of collections

to the protection of buildings failed. The simple principle

of assessing the risk of potentially endangering collections

(the ABC method) proposed by museum professionals,

based on assigning a point value to each type of hazard

risk [8], did not work at all for historic buildings. Di-

culties in assessing the vulnerability of historic buildings

to environmental and human-induced hazards are due to

the complexity of the architectural monument, that is, its

form, construction, materials used, and the state of pres-

ervation of these elements. In addition to this, the already

implemented strategies for the care and protection of

a given building have a major impact. The new approach

to risk assessment for architectural heritage requires not

only knowledge of the history of the monuments, but also

an assessment of the potential hazards present for the site

and the degree of vulnerability of the building to those

hazards. The new methods of identifying and evaluating

the data collected are supported by modern hardware and

computer programs that use a matrix of relationships be-

tween the probability of occurrence of an identied haz-

ard, the vulnerability of the building under study and the

potential impact area of a given hazard. Among articles

discussing various methods and methodologies, two are

worth recommending: A holistic and systematic assess-

ment of maintenance approaches in heritage sites [9] and

Risk assessment and risk management: Review of recent

advances on their foundation [10]. In view of the devel-

opment of increasingly specialized diagnostic knowledge,

the need has arisen to create guides available to non-pro-

fessionals to support public education on the practical

implementation of preventive conservation principles in

historic buildings [11], [12]. Many scientic studies pub-

lished in recent years have focused on the prevention of

damage caused by environmental hazards [13]. However,

man-made hazards should not be underestimated, espe-

cially in the context of recent terrorist attacks, such as in

Syria, or the war in Ukraine [14]. Most researchers of this

type of issue focus on analysing the damage caused by

such events and how to repair it, ignoring the issue of se-

curing buildings in advance in case of similar actions [15].

The selection of literature given earlier is only an out-

line of the characteristics of research on preventive con-

servation of architectural monuments. The selected publi-

cations focus on research related to the search for the most

eective methods of protecting a building from various

threats. This extension of the typical approach to the anal-

ysis of the state of preservation of the building substance

to the study of the vulnerability of the object to various

types of threats is a novelty of recent years, which has not

yet fully reached Poland. Hence, in the Polish-language

literature, within the framework of items addressing the

problem of preventive conservation in the context of ar-

chitecture, one can nd mainly items discussing various

diagnostic methods of the state of preservation of build-

ings, and threats are analysed primarily in terms of the

possibility of intervening in the building substance, so

mainly in terms of structural maintenance or ways of on-

going maintenance of monuments. The concept of “pre-

ventive conservation of the environment”, created in Po-

land by Tomaszewski, was supposed to refer to the ability

to secure tangible cultural heritage from destruction and

un justied interference with its structure. The professor

emphasized that securing this heritage involves not only

protecting a specic monument, but also its surroundings,

and therefore the environment, which has an impact on

the state of preservation of the object. Polish conservators

of historical monuments took up the Professor’s initia-

tive, organizing, after his death, a series of conferences

under the common title “Preventive Conservation of the

Environment” and putting into practice the philosophy

contained in four points: 1) creation of optimal conditions

for the survival of the authentic substance of the building;

2) material integrity of the authentic; 3) monitoring of the

condition of the monument; 4) minimalist intervention in

the event of an emerging danger [16]. Polish preserva-

tionist thought focuses on the problem of preserving the

authentic substance of the monument, while researchers

from other countries place more emphasis on activities

related to securing the monument from the negative im-

Preventive maintenance of historical buildings in European countries – analysis of selected examples 53

tive measures proposed by inspectors may be too general

in nature.

Monumentenwacht Vlaanderen (Belgium)

Belgium has an organization similar to that in the Neth-

erlands, but of a slightly dierent nature [21]. It is formed

by six institutions that support the implementation of the

government’s conservation policy. As a non-prot entity,

it is entirely funded by the government of the Flemish Re-

gion. As in the Netherlands, private owners of monuments

can take advantage of hefty subsidies combined with tax

reliefs, provided their building is covered by regular pre-

ventive care. An inspection of the entire building is car-

ried out every two to three years by an interdisciplinary

team of inspectors from Monumentenwacht, who prepare

a report that includes:

– an assessment of the state of preservation of the

building with a detailed description of the damage found,

– a preventive conservation assessment of the scope

and level of care carried out by the owner, based on obser-

vation and interview,

– environmental monitoring for measuring environ-

mental risk factors (e.g., exposure to light, pests and cli-

matic conditions),

– a risk assessment with listed potential conservation

risk factors.

The main problem signalled by the parties involved in

this initiative is the lack of a transparent methodology for

assessing building risks. So far, the methodology used al-

lowed the calculation of risks using the results of material

vulnerability analyses, the nature of the identied hazard,

the determination of the magnitude of potential losses in

the value of the building, and the calculation of the ap-

proximate cost of necessary repairs along with a schedule

of works. Risk assessments were often too subjective and

analyses incomplete. Thanks to government support re-

cently injected into the budget of this organization, the

MAKS database and MAKSbo application were created

to allow comparison of data from across the region, as

well as easy insight into applied solutions to problems

diagnosed in a building (e.g., drainage systems, window

structures, trusses, etc.) [22].

Raadvad Bygingssyn Center (Denmark)

Building Supervision in Bygingssyn, which is a non-

governmental organization that has been operating since

2000, brings together (as in Flanders) a group of special-

ists for the preventive conservation of architectural monu-

ments. As part of the annual subscription, owners of mon-

uments are entitled to an annual inspection to determine

the state of preservation of the building. The inspection

is based on an external inspection of the walls and roof.

The examination is expanded to include a diagnosis of the

condition of the basement and roof trusses. One consulta-

tion on how to maintain the building on an ongoing basis

is also possible [23]. If some damage to the building is

discovered during the inspection, the inspectors can repair

or temporarily secure it, but already for an additional fee.

pact of threat factors and with ways to weaken the threat

itself [17]. In the area of preventive measures for historic

buildings, the necessity of taking care of the daily mainte-

nance of the building in good condition and proper public

education, building people’s attachment to historic values

is also emphasized [18]. There is also lack of publications

on the Polish market explaining how to take care of one’s

own monuments, and the literature intended for owners of

historic buildings. In many European countries, one can

nd practical guides available online that contain infor-

mation on how to perform simple works to protect historic

building elements [19].

Preventive maintenance in practice

– pilot European initiatives

Despite the recognition that proactive preventive con-

servation is the best way to protect historic buildings, it is

very rarely used in practice. Therefore, it is worth men-

tioning a few examples that can form the basis of a uni-

versal model for implementing such measures throughout

Europe.

Stichting Monumentenwacht (Netherlands)

The Monumentenwacht Foundation of the Netherlands

was established in 1973 by a group of Dutch owners of

historic buildings to provide substantive and nancial sup-

port for the preservation of their historic properties [20].

As part of a subscription fee, all members of this organi-

zation receive a preservation inspection report each year

on the state of preservation of the building, along with an

indication of potential risks that threaten to diminish its

historic value. The inspections mainly concern the exteri-

or of the building. The report takes the form of a checklist

with a separate space for comments. The text is supple-

mented by photos of all weakened parts of the building

and a plan of the roof. Regular inspection makes it possi-

ble to monitor the progress of natural degradation of the

building material, so that owners can plan in advance for

the renovation of the building – organize an appropriate

repair team and apply for a government grant. Under the

1988 Dutch Law on the Protection of Monuments, the law

allows state subsidies for the maintenance of private mon-

uments, provided that regular inspections of their state of

preservation are carried out and ongoing repairs are made.

The main disadvantage of this type of activity is the

discrepancy between the subscription fee and the quality

of the inspections carried out. In the absence of high-end

instrumentation used for diagnostics, the quality of the

inspection carried out depends on the professional expe-

rience of the inspector. In a standard inspection, only the

exterior walls and roof of a building are checked, while the

cause of many problems often lies inside (such as a plumb-

ing failure) or in the foundations. In addition, there is no

guarantee that the next year’s inspection will be carried

out by the same inspector, which means that his knowl-

edge built only on the basis of the predecessor’s photos

and notes may not reect the actual progress of degrada-

tion of the building substance. For this reason, the preven-

54 Jolanta Sroczyńska

The organization is not subsidized by the government,

hence its activities are nanced additionally through or-

ders for repairs made to facilities.

Its members also train construction craftsmen at the

Nordisk Center til Bevarelse af Håndvaerk, which spe-

cializes in developing knowledge of traditional building

materials, techniques and technologies. Course students

do their apprenticeship at the owners’ facilities under the

supervision of supervisory members, using the Center’s

modern diagnostic equipment. Specialists can also pro-

vide assistance to those owners of historic buildings who

have not decided to purchase a subscription. Inspectors

provide advice by conducting free telephone consulta-

tions. For an additional fee, advice can be requested in the

eld. On its website you can download for free a number

of guides detailing basic solutions to common problems

faced by owners of historic buildings. As part of the an-

nual subscription, the amount of which depends on the

size of the house, owners are also oered a draft plan for

the preservation of the building with a proposal to spread

the work over ve years, as well as technical instructions

on how to perform the preservation work correctly. This

allows owners to prepare nancially and time-wise for

needed repairs, vetting construction teams for price and

quality of services performed.

Heritage Care (Spain, Portugal, southern France)

This is a very dierent initiative from those presented

above. It builds on the potential of the international Inter-

reg Sudoe research project, which was created in 2015 to

support the regional development of southwestern Europe.

Participants in the project worked on the development of

a new methodology for preventive protection activities

for architectural monuments from Portugal, Spain and the

southern part of France [24]. The international specialists

prepared a relevant database from the designated area of

action, which enables the creation of specic guidelines

for the ecient management of monuments. The devel-

oped common method of identifying the causes of dam-

age, thanks to the easy exchange of information within the

system, makes it possible to choose the optimal method

protection, individually tailored to the nature of the build-

ing, and to assess the risk of further damage due to various

hazard factors. The organization oers inspections to mon-

ument owners at three dierent levels. The rst (Standard

Care) is a basic inspection performed as part of an annual

subscription, which provides a report on the state of pres-

ervation of the building. The second (Plus Care)

includes

a set of extended non-invasive diagnostic tests, including

geometric surveys. The classic report is enriched with

a 3D model of the building with conservation problems

plotted. The third level (Total Care) oers a complete dig-

italization of the building and its interior, full information

on the state of preservation of the building’s material and

structure, along with registration of all risk factors and

a plan of actions to reduce the risk of damage. The basic

inspection provides the owner with a simple and quick di-

agnosis of the state of preservation of the building, and the

damage detected in the inspection allows the owner to de-

cide whether a more detailed inspection is warranted (Plus

Care level) for an additional fee. This level, thanks to the

use of advanced diagnostic techniques and computer ap-

plications (including the Microsoft Holo Lens System),

allows three-dimensional verication of proposed inter-

vention solutions and enables the owner to more fully un-

derstand conservation problems.

Risk Maps (Italy)

The Italian initiative has a dierent specicity thanks

to the full involvement of regional government agencies

and the support of the EU funds. In 1990, the Central In-

stitute for Restoration (Istituto Centrale per il Restauro)

was created and for several years implemented the “ Carta

del Rischio” project, subsidized by the EU funds. The goal

of the project was to create on a Geographic Information

System (GIS) platform a database containing all sorts of

information on the country’s cultural heritage, environ-

mental conditions taking into account the specics of the

regions, the tectonics of the terrain and the entire built en-

vironment, along with the country’s technical infrastruc-

ture network. The graphical part was supplemented by

detailed data on the history, nature and state of preserva-

tion of historic structures and other general information,

including the number of people living in the buildings.

The collected data was visualized on maps, which, thanks

to the data integrated into the system, could indicate both

the key factors of threats to monuments located in a given

region and the places of necessary immediate interven-

tions [25, p. 76]. These maps became an excellent tool for

the implementation of planned preventive maintenance

within the boards reporting to individual regional historic

preservation oces across the country.

The implementation of the project has changed the go-

vernment’s preservation policy in Italy. In the new Heri-

tage Code of 2004, the term “prevention” appeared, which

means […] a set of actions useful for reducing risk situ-

ations concerning cultural property in its context [26,

Art. 29]. Nowadays, owners of historic buildings can also

apply for funding from the government for preventive

maintenance work on the building. This unique initiative

could only be organized with the cooperation of the gov-

ernment, as its implementation required a lot of money

and advanced programming skills. Requiring ongoing ad-

ditions, the map is available to everyone online. However,

this excellent tool is used for monument preservation man-

agement only at the regional or municipal level. From the

point of view of a private monument owner, such a map

is too general. More detailed inspections and customized

solutions are needed to create preventive maintenance

guidelines for a specic site.

Importance of preventive conservation

to protect heritage from threats

The material and structural resilience of a building and

its protection against destructive hazards is one of the basic

elements of preventive conservation. Studies of a build-

ing’s vulnerability to various types of hazards have so far

Preventive maintenance of historical buildings in European countries – analysis of selected examples 55

however, such subsidies are given for major renovations

or restoration of historic buildings, not for preventive con-

servation of the building [28]. Another factor complicating

matters is the VAT, which discourages owners from sys-

tematic preventive conservation of the building. This par-

adoxical situation often leads to building deterioration and

requires action at the government initiative level.

Most owners of historic buildings want to keep their

property in the best possible condition, but approach pre-

ventive conservation with caution, not understanding its

benets. It is common to postpone cyclical maintenance

work, and many people are also unaware of what they can

replace or repair without obtaining ocial approval from

preservation authorities and without having to engage

highly specialized, and therefore expensive, preservation

companies. The public needs better advice on the princi-

ples of building conservation philosophy that underlie the

protection and care of historic buildings.

The current system of listing buildings as registered

monuments imposes a duty of care only when changes to

a building aect its historic values. Therefore, preserva-

tion authorities react only when they register a highlight-

ed, signicant deterioration of a building. This, unfortu-

nately, increases the risk of demolition and de-listing of

the monument, which is done from time to time in almost

every European country.

A major problem is also the lack of specialized person-

nel capable of conducting maintenance inspections and

risk assessments from selected hazards. Also to be added

is the standard lack of modern diagnostic equipment and

the ability to use various freely available computer applica-

tions to support the analysis needed to perform preventive

conservation. Traditional demand for training in mainte-

nance is virtually nonexistent, and vocational education in

this eld is essentially lacking. As Dann and Cantell note,

for many building contractors […] maintenance may be

less interesting than remodeling and less attractive than

major renovation of historic buildings [28, p. 189].

More reasons can be given for the limited use of pre-

ventive conservation, the bulk of the arguments, however,

come down to a matter of behavioural economics and the

country’s existing laws. Essentially, the method requires

a change in the attitudes and habits of both monument

owners and ocials. Understanding what the term really

means for historic preservation is the rst stage in realiz-

ing the importance of the issue. The second stage is the

need to incorporate its principles into practical action, as

part of a modern strategy for the protection and care of

monuments. This involves building a system of substan-

tive and nancial assistance to owners of historic build-

ings and subsidizing research into the still-forming meth-

odology and tools that support non-invasive diagnosis of

a building along with its environmental surroundings.

Translated by

Jolanta Sroczyńska

focused around environmental analysis (e.g., oods, earth-

quakes, tsunamis, etc.) and mainly in areas where such

phenomena occur frequently. In the face of skyrocketing

climate change and the unbridled expansion of human civ-

ilization, modern heritage preservation must take on new

challenges of prevention examining the impact of all threat

factors, including terrorist acts and warfare. Only a proac-

tive approach to safeguarding built heritage can ensure its

prolonged existence.

Managers of architectural heritage must be adequately

prepared even before a threat arises, by drawing up and

implementing a plan to eectively manage risk readiness.

This applies to private owners of monuments, as well as

to regional conservation authorities that verify the level

of heritage protection in their area. The need for preven-

tion mechanisms for cultural heritage is highlighted by the

UNESCO World Heritage Committee [27].

Preventive conservation also contributes to the activity

of small specialized restoration companies and the reac-

tivation of dying building crafts. Small orders, related to

ongoing repairs, strengthen local craftsmanship and the

overall “reuse” policy based on the use of indigenous ma-

terials and repair techniques.

Conclusions

Although preventive conservation is objectively more

benecial to a monument than reactive conservation (in-

tervention after the destruction has been registered), this

is not reected in the current practice and policy of mon-

ument protection either in Poland or in other European

countries. The examples presented above are singular, and

the experiences are too poorly disseminated. Poland lacks

an organization that advises owners of historic buildings

on what and how to do to properly care for their property.

National policies supporting preventive maintenance have

been introduced only in Denmark, the Netherlands and It-

aly. While most institutions in other countries declare that

preventive maintenance is a central part of their strategy,

they do not even implement it in their own buildings. To

the author’s knowledge, none of the provincial preserva-

tion oces located in a historic building have commis-

sioned a risk analysis for their own premises, reducing in-

terventions to a response to the damage that has occurred.

The damage mitigation action plans proposed to own-

ers in the examples presented above are now being im-

plemented in many countries as part of the regulatory

framework for conservation projects [28]. The primary

purpose of such a plan is to emphasize the importance of

the building through an assessment and analysis of pres-

ervation needs, which are drawn up on the basis of a eld

inspection.

The high cost of maintaining historic buildings is a com-

mon problem. Subsidies for the maintenance of such build-

ings are necessary to increase owners’ interest in keeping

buildings in good condition. In most European countries,

56 Jolanta Sroczyńska

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Abstract

Preventive maintenance of historical buildings in European countries – analysis of selected examples

Architectural heritage, due to its material nature, is extremely sensitive to factors contributing to its degradation. Preventive conservation is cur-

rently the best way to protect the material authenticity of heritage and is well established in archaeology and museology. The protection of immovable

heritage still lacks a proper understanding of this type of action.

The article presents a few selected examples of the application of such a method of historic preservation in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark,

Italy and the region bordering France, Spain and Portugal. Several years of positive experience from such initiatives is reason enough to implement

similar measures in Poland as well. Dissemination of knowledge of preemptive actions, which will allow the preparation of appropriate safeguards

for the monument even before the threat occurs, is undoubtedly the most optimal solution. However, it is necessary to properly assist owners of

monuments to provide them not only with additional funds for the ongoing maintenance of buildings, but also with a more complete and reliable

knowledge about the vulnerability of a given building to various types of degradation. Modern historic preservation should replace the previous

reactive approach with planned preventive maintenance.

Key words: preventive conservation, risk management, architectural monuments, historic buildings

Preventive maintenance of historical buildings in European countries – analysis of selected examples 57

Streszczenie

Konserwacja prewencyjna budynków historycznych w krajach europejskich − analiza wybranych przykładów

Dziedzictwo architektoniczne, ze względu na swój materialny charakter, jest niezmiernie wrażliwe na czynniki przyczyniające się do jego degra-

dacji. Konserwacja prewencyjna jest obecnie najlepszym sposobem ochrony materialnej autentyczności dziedzictwa i ma swą ugruntowaną pozycję

w archeologii i muzeologii. W ochronie dziedzictwa nieruchomego wciąż jeszcze brakuje właściwego zrozumienia dla tego typu działań.

W artykule zaprezentowano kilka wybranych przykładów zastosowania takiej metody ochrony zabytków w Belgii, Holandii, Danii, Włoszech

oraz w regionie leżącym na pograniczu Francji, Hiszpanii i Portugalii. Kilkanaście lat pozytywnych doświadczeń płynących z tego typu inicjatyw jest

wystarczającym powodem, aby podobne działania wdrożyć również i w Polsce. Upowszechnienie wiedzy na temat działań prewentywnych, które

jeszcze przed wystąpieniem zagrożenia pozwolą na przygotowanie odpowiednich zabezpieczeń zabytku, są niewątpliwie najbardziej optymalnym

rozwiązaniem. Konieczne jest jednak odpowiednie wspomożenie właścicieli zabytków, aby zapewnić im nie tylko dodatkowe fundusze na bieżącą

konserwację budynków, ale także pełniejszą i rzetelniejszą wiedzę o podatności budynku na różne typy degradacji. W nowoczesnej ochronie zabyt-

ków powinno się zamienić dotychczasowe reakcyjne działania na planową konserwację prewencyjną.

Słowa kluczowe: konserwacja prewentywna, zarządzanie ryzykiem, zabytki architektury, budynki historyczne