# Atlas of Defects within a Global Building Inspection System
## 5 Conclusions  
Considering the question that resulted in the presented research (how can an expeditious tool to identify defects and their urgency of repair be achieved?), this paper has demonstrated that it is possible to develop a catalogue of defects for the non-structural building envelope, taking into account (i) a well-defined classification of defects; (ii) a predetermined scope of building elements/materials; and (iii) a scale of urgency-of-repair levels, whose classification is determined by specific criteria. The atlas of defects combines visual and descriptive contents, aiming at a simple identification approach, easy to use during fieldwork.  
The proposed atlas of defects may be used by surveyors during technical inspections. Furthermore, occasional surveyors, like architects and engineers, may also benefit from a tool like the atlas of defects when performing building assessments. Technical building inspections are used in several situations, like within maintenance plans, before deciding on retrofitting or rebuilding options, at the design stage (retrofitting) and to assess insurance claims. Additionally, researchers may use the proposed tool.  
The use of such an atlas of defects is expected to help achieve a more reliable diagnosis of building defects, with a more accurate and intuitive identification of the type of defects and their level of urgency of repair. In turn, that improved reliability should improve the effectiveness of maintenance and repair actions, thus prolonging the service life of building elements at lower costs.  
The atlas of defects that is proposed was developed within a global building inspection system, but, with the presented methodology, other atlases may be developed within different systems, given the basic materials and, most importantly, a well-defined scope and classification systems (of defects and urgency of repair or others). Although the proposed atlas is focused on non-structural building elements, its layout may be extrapolated to structural building elements.  
To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no such catalogue of building defects and respective urgency of repair in the literature. Furthermore, the need for the proposed atlas of defects has been identified by previous research [9].  
In the future, the atlas of defects may be improved with further photographs representing a wider variety of significant situations within the same type of defect and building element/material.  
Furthermore, the whole building inspection system will be computerised, including the atlas of defects. That step will provide an advantage in terms of developing a building pathology database, which may be useful in the context of maintenance plans and research. The visual aid of the atlas of defects represents an advantage in terms of swiftness of identification and characterisation. Moreover, the criteria to determine the urgency of repair may be included in algorithms, and the user of the computerised inspection system may only need to answer some simple questions.  
Conceptualization, J.d.B.; methodology, C.P., J.d.B. and J.D.S.; software, C.P.; validation, C.P.; formal analysis, C.P.; investigation, C.P.; resources, C.P., J.B., J.D.S. and I.F.-C.; data curation, C.P.; writing--original draft preparation, C.P.; writing--review and editing, J.B., J.D.S. and I.F.-C.; visualization, C.P.; supervision, J.d.B., J.D.S. and I.F.C.; project administration, J.B.; funding acquisition, J.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT), grant number PTDC/ECI-CON/29286/2017, and also by FCT, grant number SFRH/BD/131113/2017.  
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of CERIS, from IST-UL.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.