Analysis of suitability of national sustainability recommendations for thermal comfort in post-disaster social housing in Yucatan, Mexico

This study focused on user s’ thermal comfort in post disaster houses in Yucatan, México. FONDEN was the national fund in Mexico dedicated to reconstructing public infrastructure and social housing after disasters (World bank, 2012). An equivalent of eight hundred million American Dollars was invested yearly in reconstruction throughout Mexico. However, recent research has pointed out that the delivered poor thermal comfort, being one of the main causes of dissatisfaction in them (Carrasco et al., 2016) and in some cases led occupants to abandon or repurpose their houses (Castro del Río, 2009). The relevance of this study is that this house model has been mass produced to date in similar government-led housing programmes. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of national recommendations for sustainability and thermal comfort in naturally ventilated buildings such as these social housing. This is relevant, given that economically restricted societies cannot rely on air conditioning systems to achieve comfortable environmental levels in their houses. The method utilised was a computer-aided simulation analysis using the Software IES Virtual Environment (2019). The strategies tested evaluated the national appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) for improving thermal comfort in the Mexican context. Results indicated that the common approaches for improvements including building insulation in naturally ventilated buildings might result in counterproductive effects. However, it has positive effects in energy demand reduction when considering the integration of air conditioning system. This study contributed to the scarce knowledge about thermal comfort in naturally ventilated buildings in Mexico.