Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 18, 1867–1890, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1867-2018 © Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Formation, breaching and flood consequences of a landslide dam near Bujumbura, Burundi Léonidas Nibigira1, Hans-Balder Havenith1, Pierre Archambeau2, and Benjamin Dewals2 1Geohazards and Environment, Department of Geology, University of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium 2Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE), Research unit Urban & Environmental Engineering, University of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium Correspondence: Léonidas Nibigira (
[email protected]) Received: 18 October 2017 – Discussion started: 23 October 2017 Revised: 31 March 2018 – Accepted: 15 June 2018 – Published: 6 July 2018 Abstract. This paper investigates the possible formation of ily created landslide dam caused 64 casualties. Over 940 a landslide dam on the Kanyosha River near Bujumbura, houses were destroyed and this resulted in over 12 500 home- the capital of Burundi, as well as the interplay between the less people (UNITAR/UNOSAT, 2014; Reliefweb, 2014). breaching of this landslide dam and the flooding along the This indicates that a complete assessment of flood risk should river. We present an end-to-end analysis, ranging from the take into account landslides which may be considered as origin of the landslide up to the computation of flood waves some of the most important natural hazards in the region. induced by the dam breaching. The study includes three main They interact with the hydrographic network by forming nat- steps. First, the mass movement site was investigated with ural dams.