The "Catalogue of typical problems and parameters to be measured of historic masonry" is oriented to give an overview about frequent structural typologies, damages and other problems affecting ancient masonry constructions including the parameters which are useful and the non-destructive (or minor destructive) techniques (NDTs, MDTs) that may be applied to characterise those damages or the structure itself for a structural assessment in the preservation of Cultural Heritage.
The information was collected from partners from different European Countries to include possible regional characteristics and also from different disciplines and sectors of the Cultural Heritage with complementary roles (Equipment designers, developers of NDT methodologies, NDT users, experts for structural models and owners of Cultural Properties), in order to cover and integrate the different points of view. So, the information given by NDT users are mostly related to practical cases like, for example, the strategy to detect the presence of moisture in a certain historical building, and the owners of historical structures are mostly interested in the historical research of these structures.
The catalogue includes 88 templates about problems affecting historic masonry containing a description and their possible origins illustrated with photos or figures, the parameters to be measured for its characterisation and the applicable NDTs in order to solve them. Therefore, it is a useful instrument for service providers, researchers on NDTs, cultural heritage managers, city authorities and also policy makers, to get a first impression about the aspects involved in the preservation of Cultural Heritage, that have to be taken into account in diagnosis or repairing projects, providing a baseline to have some criteria about different actual methods to assess historical structures.
The catalogue is still in progress by collecting more templates with information to improve the catalogue till the end of the project.