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More than 226 million people are affected by some type of disaster every year in various dimensions of human life, both in the short and long term. In this context, housing provision plays a leading role when it comes to basic needs and the choice of construction technologies and materials are determinant for a well-succeeded housing provision process. This work aims to analyze the viability of reinforced masonry technology with cement-stabilized compressed earth blocks as an alternative for the (re)construction process in situations that involve disaster risk reduction (DRR). To address this issue, a discussion from the literature and the main results obtained during the investigations carried out within the scope of the Simple Housing Solution (SHS) Project are presented. In the sequence, analyses are performed under United Nations Development Program/International Recovery Platform sustainability recommendations: environmental, technical, financial and socio-organizational aspects. It is concluded that the technology of Compressed Earth Blocks (CEBs) reinforced structural masonry has a high potential to be successfully applied in DRR situations, especially when associated with the community construction system in a joint effort.

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The authors have provided very useful correlations for the estimation of soil unit weight for a number of soils, based on a very large database (Moon and Ku 2016). However, in the specific case of clays, some gaps can be found, as stated by the authors: "Some missing data were due to a lack of information on the measured PI and e with respect to V s1 and V sn ." This is clearly observed in Figs. 7, 8a, and 8c in the paper under discussion, where no values are available from PI between 100% and 250%. Even for PI between 80% and 100% only three values are available in Figs. 8a and 8c. Also, it can be observed from Figs. 8b and 8d that few data are available for void ratio in the range 3-4.The discussers have performed a number of in situ and laboratory tests in a very soft organic, very plastic clay site, and the corresponding data can be used to fill some of the above-mentioned gaps, checking whether the authors' trends are valid in those PI and e ranges or different trends should be obtained.The Sarapuí site has been used extensively since the mid 1970s, and a comprehensive report of the data from the opening of this site until the 1980s has been provided by Almeida and Marques (2003). A number of in situ and laboratory tests have been performed recently at a new test site some 1.5 km from the previous one, named Sarapuí II, from which data have been reported by Jannuzzi (2013) and Jannuzzi et al. (2015). Some properties of the material are presented in Figure D2 presents the authors' data of total unit weight versus plasticity index (Fig. 7 in the paper), with the discussers' data included. The trend proposed by the authors for PI values greater than 100% was influenced by only three values, all of them having PI = 250%. It seems that a better trend would be slightly below the authors' trend line. In fact, the indicated trend (suggested by visual inspection only) seems to fit all of the data better, including the authors' data. Moreover, the data also indicate a much smaller dependence of PI on ␥ t for PI values greater than approximately 100%, and a trend of constant ␥ t values has been suggested in this region.Normalized V S1 values have been plotted versus plasticity index and void ratio in Figs. D3a and D3b, respectively (Figs. 8a and 8b in the paper). Again, the new data seem to indicate trends slightly below the authors' trends, as suggested in the figures, although as in the previous case based only on visual inspection. Site-specific normalized V Sn values for Sarapuí II clay could have been plotted as well, as the available data allow the corresponding evaluation. However, due to the limited size of this discussion, the analysis will be limited herein to V S1 values.As in the case of ␥ t versus PI, it seems that there is a threshold for the influence of PI on V S1 , which seems to occur for PI ϳ 150%. A different behaviour may be verified with respect to V S1 versus e. In fact, although the discussers' data indicate a trend slightly below the authors' trend, there seems to be no threshold for the void...

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