Assessment of the technical condition of heritage buildings with the use of fuzzy logic

Construction objects must be protected not only at the stage of their construction, but also during exploitation. Particular attention should be paid to objects included in the list of monuments. The Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments states that any building that is important for history and science can become a heritage building and should therefore be preserved. The aim of this article was to improve the method of visual assessment of the technical condition of heritage buildings with the use of fuzzy logic. The improved method is to facilitate the comparison of assessments of the technical condition of a building performed at intervals specified in the regulations, often by different people. The research was conducted on the basis of technical expertise prepared for five examined buildings that were tenement houses entered in the register of monuments. The use of the visual method provides for the assessment of individual elements of the object by an expert and a verbal description of the elements using a five-point scale. A significant limitation of this method is uncertainty associated with the exact ranges of the acceptable values, as these ranges are subjective and depend on the opinion of an evaluator. The impact of this limitation can be reduced by applying fuzzy logic. In the fuzzy logic model, as input variables the following were applied; assessments of the technical condition of individual elements of the object (underground structure, load-bearing walls, ceilings, roof, other elements) and an integral indicator of the technical condition of the entire historic object, calculated as the output value.