Research will be addressed through 3 PhD theses which will form the core of this project.
PhD 1: landslides and their relation to LULC
The objective is to get an accurate understanding of the occurrence of the landslides in space and time with regard to LULC and land management. The central hypotheses is that certain LULC changes (e.g. deforestation) and management practices (e.g. terraces) influence both the frequency and characteristics (e.g. size) of landslides. To investigate this, we will construct detailed inventories of past landslides (through extensive amounts of fieldwork + remote sensing analyses). These inventories will then be analyzed to quantify the impact of LULC changes, as well as to construct relevant susceptibility and hazard maps.
PhD 2: understanding flood hazards
Similar to PhD 1, the central hypothesis behind this research is that LULC has a very significant influence on the rainfall-runoff response of Rwandese catchments and by extent the occurrence of flood events. We will address this question by measuring rainfall and runoff in a set of representative catchments; integrating these measurements with other available data of the existing rainfall/runoff gauging network in a detailed rainfall-runoff response analysis; and based on the results from statistical analysis on collected data, the past sensitivity to floods and future scenario will help simulate the river discharges and flood risks to further design applicable tools for land management and flood risks reduction.
PhD 3: assessing vulnerability and risk assessment to flood and landslide hazards
The objective of this research is to undertake a contextualized assessment of the population vulnerability and risk regarding flood and landslide hazards, taking into account resilience mechanisms at the household and community scales, as well as DRR programs already in place in this region. Our hypothesis is that, vulnerability plays a central role in determining the impacts and risks of flooding and landslides events. We further hypothesize that this vulnerability of the population varies significantly for landslide and flood hazards, making it necessary to differentiate between both types of hazards.