ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the practices of planned preventive conservation may interact with structural behavior of old buildings. In the Planned Preventive Conservation frame, the maintenance system traditionally includes inspections and condition assessment, monitoring and small repairs, but is not thought separately from the evaluation of the need for more important interventions, aimed at improving the use of the premises or to prevent major risks. Furthermore, management, maintenance and prevention are taken into account just in the phase of designing interventions. Conservation of built cultural heritage can be characterized as "planned and preventive" when it is understood as a process, which has to be dealt with thinking on the long run and never focusing on single acts. Preventive Conservation concept has been developed for built heritage, exploiting the idea of prevention itself and the research carried out in the field of museums and collections, which made a broad use of the concept of risk management.
