Abstract
Over the last decades, South Africa has experienced a number of devastating wind events occurring almost every year. A large number of housing developments, particularly in the low-income segment, are not engineered adequately and are thus susceptible to high wind speeds, resulting in substantial damage to houses and socio-economic losses. Preventing such wind events from becoming disastrous, as witnessed in recent years, requires improved technical standards and construction practices. In this paper, an investigation is made into housing developments that were exposed to harsh climatic environments with high wind speeds. Two case studies are investigated in Cape Town and in Gauteng. In Cape Town, the housing development is in a coastal area. The houses experienced structural damage of foundations caused by wind-induced erosion of loose unsaturated soils. The study comprised of site visits and assessment of structural damage to houses, analysis of climatic information pertinent to the area and limited wind tunnel tests. The output of the study provided an insight on spatial planning of houses in close proximity to each other, and the need to perform either a wind tunnel test or Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of a development as part of the planning process. The other study was that of a wind disaster in the inland province of Gauteng which occurred in December, 2017. The disaster resulted in damages to houses, substations and a roof of a mall in Protea Glen, South West of Johannesburg. Engineering modelling of the houses subject to these winds indicate a need to review the technical standards and construction practices, and these are highlighted in the paper.