It is desirable to preserve historical buildings both for cultural and aesthetic reasons, while private and commercial buildings have to be preserved for economic reasons. Both of these agendas have to be brought into line with modern building utilization requirements. This is also the reason why damage to buildings has to be recorded and assessed while finding the causes for damage and restoring it.

That calls for a scientific analysis. Restoration is even more important with buildings with an historical back-ground. Therefore, one of the major challenges faced by material sciences today is integrating new designs and utilizing contemporary materials for service, maintenance and renovation while preserving as much of the originally built substance as possible. This includes the development of nondestructive testing methods both when identifying and assessing damage.

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