Expert Cause and Effect Analysis of the Failure of Historical Structures Taking Into Account Factors That are Difficult to Measure

The protection of Polish architectural heritage in the former eastern borderlands, accomplished through the conservation and technical securing of historical structures, constitutes one of the main programmes that are implemented by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Currently, many Polish historical buildings in the former eastern borderlands are in a very bad technical condition. The load-bearing systems of these elements, as well as elements of their finish, require immediate emergency securing work. The basic steps that precede conservation work are emergency structural works, which guarantee the durability and stability of the entire historical substance. The specifics and complexity of the problem of the failure of historical buildings often demands an in-depth analysis of a series of factors that are difficult to measure and which are responsible for the cause and effect relationship during the early stage of the technical evaluation of a structure. The analyses of failures of numerous historical structures, for instance that were carried out by the authors, have become the inspiration for the search for effective methods of analysis that would allow for an in-depth analysis of the causes and effects of the failures in question. The DEMATEL method (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) that has been presented in this work, and its fuzzy extension, has lately become one of the more popular methods used in the cause-and-effect analysis of various phenomena. The authors demonstrated how this method works on the example of the evaluation and securing of the load-bearing system of the XVII Collegiate church of the Holy Trinity in the town of Olykha in the Volhynskiy Oblast, Ukraine.