(PDF) Environmental Impact of Landslides

DISSERTATION
PROPOSAL

Table of Contents
WORKING TITLE..........................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
AIM..................................................................................................................................................3
OBJECTIVES..................................................................................................................................3
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................................5
ANALYTICAL APPROACH.........................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

WORKING TITLE
How has the mudslide in Freetown Sierra Leone affected the construction in the city?
INTRODUCTION
On 14th August 2017, in Sierra a mud flow event occurred around and in the main capital
city of Freetown in Sierra Leone due to continuous heavy torrential rainfall for 3 days. Heavy
mudslide destroyed hundreds of buildings, damaged thousands of buildings, killed more than
1000 people and making more than 3000 people homeless. Large area of the western Sierra
Leone was affected. This event took place on the outskirts of the Freetown approximately 16 Km
from the capital. This event affected the construction in the city in many ways as most of the
building near the mudslide area were either destroyed or damaged as well as many under
construction buildings were also destroyed. This mudslide also affected the quality of the land
were construction was to be done. So, there was a need of construction in the city in many ways
as many buildings in or around the mudslide area were either destroyed or damaged, roads or
bridges connecting different cities together were also either moderately or severely damaged.
Many under-develop areas near the disaster area were also affected drastically and faced lots of
difficulties in construction.
AIM
To analyse the effect of mudslide on construction of city: A case study on Freetown
Sierra Leone.
OBJECTIVES
 To identify event of mudslide 2017 in Freetown Sierra Leone
 To analyse the cause of mudslide on Freetown
 To investigate the impact of mudslide on Freetown
 To examine the impact of mudslide on construction of Freetown
 To analyse the after effects of mudslide in Freetown of Sierra Leone
LITERATURE REVIEW
According to the view of Eromo Egbejule (2019), This event of mudslide affected the
capital city of Freetown in Sierra Leone drastically. Due to heavy torrential rainfall that
occurred for 3 continuous days made the hillside collapse which as a result caused mudslide on
the outskirts of capital city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. This mudslide and heavy rainfall flood

combine overwhelmed the main drainage system of the Freetown which eventually created
waterways which caused vigorous movements on down steep street. The 41 inches of rainfall
also almost tripled the chances of mudslide in the deforested area. This drastic event also gave
rise to various waterborne diseases such as typhoid, cholera and with the combination of flood it
was spread more drastically. The major impact of this mud flow was on two main things that
destroyed the Freetown were first of all the buildings or construction was affected drastically and
another was the drainage system of the city was overwhelmed. Not only this due to poor flood
plan of the city both mudslide and flood damaged the city drastically. After this natural disaster
complete affected were covered in mud, many people died due to this.
As per the view of Harris and et.al, (2018), the main cause of this mud slide event was
heavy rainfall, deforestation, soil erosion. Freetown topography varied from thick density woods
to partially or completely deforested mountains. This was a natural disaster which occurred as a
result of unstable soil due to uprooting of trees for construction purpose over the hills. This
uprooting of trees caused deforestation, unstable soil which was more vulnerable to collapse.
These overcrowded hills with illegal construction became the main back-end reason for this
drastic mudslide event. The main reason of this deforestation was illegal construction done by
poor people. Not only this the overall flood plan of the city was much poorly constructed on
which nobody paid attention before this event. These two had been the main reason which
caused mudslide to occur and destroyed the city. There was one more reason of this disaster
which is, no warning was given by the weather forecasting department or any other departments
for this kind of disaster. Due to the carelessness of such government departments this disaster
occurred at such high level cause thousands of peoples death, damage to the infrastructure,
houses, roads etc. they should have warned all the people living near or on the hills beforehand
so that this adverse effect of mudslide could have been minimized.
As explained by Nelson and et.al, (2019), the impact of this mudslide was way more
drastic than anyone could have imagined. Nobody had thought that this mudslide could have
caused more than 1000 people killing, more than 3000 people becoming homeless, destroying
hundreds of buildings or houses, damaging thousands of houses and buildings, damaging the
quality of land, under construction buildings etc. Additional flood also caused more severity and
increased the causalities in the city. This event also forced the government to pay attention
towards the illegal construction going on around the city as well as on the poorly constructed

flood plan of the city. Approximately 25 Km east area of the Freetown was covered in mud.
Most of the under developed areas failed to sustain the significant damage of the area, loss of life
and infrastructure damage among the people.
In addition to this illustrated by Osuteye, Johnson and Brown, (2017), Government of
Sierra Leone faced loads of difficulties on the reconstruction of the city. They had to not only
focus on the reconstruction of destroyed and damaged houses and buildings but they also had to
focus on the construction of houses and buildings for all the 3000 plus homeless people. They
also needed to focus on all the illegal construction of houses or buildings going on in and around
the city. The government of Sierra Leone faced most of the difficulties on the reconstruction of
the underdeveloped regions of the Freetown. They also opened thousands of relief funds and
camps to all the homeless people. Even after 1 year of trying complete the construction of the
city Sierra government failed to provide all the affected people homes to live in for. In other
words the construction of the city was affected drastically as most of the building near the
affected area were damaged or destroyed i.e. they weren't in the condition to be lived in and not
only this for reconstruction of the buildings first of all government needed to clear complete
mudslide and flooded area in order to start the construction of the city again.
Also, illustrated by Shin, Yeo and Jung, (2018), the after effects if the mudslide event
was also drastic. Overall if an analysis is done then this complete event affected and damaged
properties in an area equal or more than 110,000 meter square. Many roads or bridges that
connected all the nearby cities were either moderately or severely damaged. After this mudslide
many parts of the city faced power outage and affect the electricity distribution and supply
department drastically as there had been many incidents related to electricity. Approximately
more than 1000 electricity incidents were reported after this mudslide disaster. Large number of
vehicles, roads, buildings, bridges etc. were damaged drastically. Not only this due to this natural
disaster risk of rise of much water borne diseases were increasing continuously. There was a
drastic shortage of clean drinking water, medicines, blanket, foods etc.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research will be done to analysis the effects of mudslide on the construction of the
city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. For this dissertation qualitative research method will be used
for primary data collection method. For this primary data collection a survey will be conducted
among the affected people and few of the government authorities of Freetown in Sierra Leone.

For this survey a questionnaire will be made and distributed among those peoples. Few
interviews will also be conducted among affected people in order to get a brief view of the
situation and its intensity. For the secondary data magazines, newspapers or articles will be
considered. This will help in increasing the reliability and validity of the research. After ths both
primary and secondary data will be compared and analysed. After the analysis research about all
the required missing information will be done.
Research philosophy is a way to deal with the data that is to be collected. It is of three
types, first is positivism, second id realism and last is interpretivist. These research philosophies
are selected according to the classification of the study that is to be done. Here implication of
research philosophy on research strategy is done in general, and accordingly data selection
method is chosen in particular. For this qualitative research interpretivist research philosophy
will be used where in depth analysis of both primary and secondary data collected will be done.
In this research philosophy small samples will be collected and analysed through questionnaire
distribution, researching newspaper articles, magazines, conducting interview etc.
For qualitative research there are various types of qualitative methods out of which in this
dissertation Case study qualitative method will be used where interviews will be conducted,
documents, reports, survey will be conducted. Based on all the above points research approach
will be selected which is of three types: first is deductive approach, second is inductive approach,
and last is abduction approach. For this dissertation inductive approach will be used. It generally
starts with the aim, objectives that are needed during the research process (Francis, 2017). In this
first of all data is collected by various observation, survey, test etc. then based on that data
collected a pattern will be created and based on the created pattern a theory will be created or
build.
Then based on the research method and approach research design will be created which is
completely based on the choice of the research method i.e. qualitative or quantitative. Research
design is simple a general plan about what is to be done in order to answer the research
questions. Research design is if two types i.e. exploratory research and conclusive research. For
this dissertation exploratory research design will be selected as in this research purpose and data
needed is not clear, ill defined and open ended rough structured. In this data collection procedure
is not set and is flexible. It is normally used in qualitative data analysis.

At last after all these things sampling of data is done. Sampling is a specified principle
which is sued to select the members of population which is included in the study. Sampling of
data has many benefits such as: it makes research of any type and size manageable, significantly
saves cost of the research, results in more accurate research findings, provides an opportunity to
process the information in a more efficient way and lastly it also helps in accelerating the speed
of primary data collection. For sampling primary data first target population will be set, then a
sampling frame will be chosen, then sampling size will be determined, after this sampling
method will be defined and lastly chosen sample method will be applied in practise. Sampling is
of two types first is probability sampling in which all the members of the sample population has
a known chance of participating in the study, second is non- probability sampling in which
sampling group members are selected on non-random manner. These samplings are further
divided into many techniques of sampling (Nagurney, 2017). For this dissertation probability
sampling will be used with random sampling technique.
ANALYTICAL APPROACH
There are wide range of analytical approaches that are normally used in qualitative
analysis. Some common analytical approaches are: content analysis, narrative analysis,
comparative method, interactive approach, thematic analysis. For this dissertation thematic
analysis will be used. This approach is used in qualitative research. It emphasises on recording,
examining, pinpointing various patterns within data. These themes are various patters across
complete data sets that are important to answer research questions. These themes represent
patterned response or meaning of the data which is related to the research questions. There are
different levels of themes that can be identified, semantic and latent. Thematic analysis mostly
focuses on one theme. Systematic themes are used to identified the surface and explicit meaning
of the data. For this dissertation systematic thematic analysis will be done.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Francis, D.J., 2017. The Politics of Economic Regionalism: Sierra Leone in ECOWAS: Sierra
Leone in ECOWAS. Routledge.
Harris, D., and et.al., 2018. Mental health nurses and disaster response in Sierra Leone. The
Lancet Global Health. 6(2). pp.e146-e147.
Nagurney, A., 2017, July. A multitiered supply chain network equilibrium model for disaster
relief with capacitated freight service provision. In International Conference on
Dynamics of Disasters (pp. 85-108). Springer, Cham.
Nelson, A., and et.al., 2019. Coupling Natural Hazard Estimates with Road Network Analysis to
Assess Vulnerability and Risk: Case Study of Freetown, Building Disruption
Simulations in Hydrometeorological Risk Areas in Data-Scarce Sierra
Leone. Transportation Research Record, p.0361198118822272.
Osuteye, E., Johnson, C. and Brown, D., 2017. The data gap: An analysis of data availability on
disaster losses in sub-Saharan African cities. International journal of disaster risk
reduction. 26. pp.24-33.
Shin, Y., Yeo, J. and Jung, K., 2018. The Effectiveness of International Non-Governmental
Organizations’ Response Operations during Public Health Emergency: Lessons Learned
from the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone. International journal of environmental
research and public health. 15(4). p.650.
Online
Eromo Egbejule. 2019. Mudslide in Freetown Sierra Leone. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-leone-mudslide-migration/mudslide-in-sierra-
leone-exposes-dangers-of-freetowns-unchecked-sprawl-idUSKBN1D14XB>