The Italian classification scheme of buildings - Application to apartments and schools

The Italian acoustic classification of buildings is described by two standards, now under revision. The UNI 11367 gives a detailed description of the classification scheme, including sampling procedures and calculation of uncertainty and is useful for buildings with a large number of homogenous elements. The UNI 11444 involves the selection of the “worst case” in a sample of measurable building elements in order to identify the building units to be completely measured. Both standards are based on voluntary application, except for the specific case of public buildings, for which there are some enforced requirements. In fact, in the case of new construction, renovation and maintenance of public buildings, environmental criteria must be pursued (CAM Decree 2017), including building acoustics (class II and other requirements of UNI 11367) and indoor acoustic comfort criteria (UNI 11532). For the latter, the standard gives limit values for the descriptors, although, for the moment, only the limit values for schools are published. This paper describes the classification procedures and reports case studies of apartments and schools in Italy where the procedure and the limit values are applied.