Housing & Infrastructure
international reference documents, was also conducted to clarify existing as well
as proposed provisions.
The draft Philippine Building Act was filed for the consideration of both the 17th
and 18th Congresses. The proposal included issue papers and recommendations
that document the various issues, concerns and suggestions for reform collected
from nearly two years’ worth of consultations with stakeholders.
The proposed Philippine Building Act intends to better safeguard life, health,
property, and public welfare, through five major reforms. First is to streamline
building permit processes by distinguishing among simple, ordinary, and special
buildings or structures, and clearly providing processes and requirements that are
commensurate with the potential disaster risk in each classification. Second is to
design buildings to be more resilient to multiple hazards, including emergency
evacuation centers. Third is to create inter-agency and multi-sectoral building
regulations and standards council to harmonize and update provisions annually.
Fourth is to assess the integrity of buildings that are 15 years or older, including
simplified self-assessment by owners for simple buildings and structures and
stringent assessment by accredited certifiers for special buildings. The fifth and
last major reform is to incentivize building owners voluntarily retrofit old
buildings if found lacking in terms of current standards of structural integrity and
fire-resistant construction. However, it is also crucial to reform many other
aspects of technical, administrative, and penal provisions to help improve both
the enforcement of and compliance with the law.
Funded by: World Bank technical assistance for the DPWH
BAYANIHANETS: Building Robust
Cooperative Community Networks
and
Sustainable
Isabel Austria 1 | Roel Ocampo 1 | Cedric Festin 2 | Joseph Michelangelo Cruz 1 | Augusto Remillano
II 1 | Monica Villanoy 1 | Lope Beltran II 2
1 Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute, UP Diliman
2 Department of Computer Science, UP Diliman
E-mail: [email protected]
The growing digital and information divide is a global problem, where more
advanced communities have rapid progress in technology while disadvantaged
communities struggle with more fundamental issues and fall further behind. In
the Philippines, improving Internet connection quality and access is a priority goal
34 | UP Diliman SALIKSIKHAY