Building habitability and ranking of discrimination based on safety and sustainability to disasters. Case study: Wooden houses

Abstract

Every housing should fulfill safety, comfort and durability standards, even more when due to climate change disasters occur more often than ever. In Chile, construction standards can be found in the General Urban Planning and Construction Ordinance (OGUC), whose update will include elements for risk management in order to decrease vulnerability. In this study, thermal, mechanic, fire resistant and acoustic isolation standards where evaluated in 5 thermic zones. This information allowed the creation of manufacturing, installation, technical specification manuals, and a bill that regulates emergency housing and transient settlements standards. This experience allowed a critical analysis of the compliance with standards for social housing and wood building, which does not account, for example, for smoke opacity and toxicity, thermal-acoustic insulators and fire resistance: less harmful preservatives or coatings with sustainability in mind. The existence of the ordinance (OGUC) does not imply compliance of energy efficiency, seismic and fire resistance standards simultaneously in practice, as many housing projects do not consider a final reception of work. Multi-criteria discrimination analyzes may help to make design decisions in wood constructions.

Keywords

• estándares de construcción de viviendas, protección de la madera, resistencia al fuego