Scaling nature-based solutions for climate resilient infrastructure

Role: Research assistant, Sierra Leone
Project: Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre – Imperial Learning Alliance
Affiliation: Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre
ORCID ID: N/A
Email: atarawally@slurc.org

Ansumana Tarawally is an environmental researcher and Research Officer at the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he supports urban research on environmental risk, informal settlements, and community resilience. In this role, he has led on research design, data-collection tools, field implementation, data analysis, reporting, presentations, stakeholder engagement, and the supervision of research teams and field staff.

His professional background includes environmental research, project management, spatial analysis, and applied data systems, with strong experience in field coordination, environmental risk assessment, GIS-based analysis, and evidence generation for planning and decision-making.

Ansumana has strong technical skills in quantitative and qualitative research, such as household survey design, field data collection and quality control, transcription, and spatial analysis using QGIS. His academic training includes a Master of Engineering (MEng) and Environmental Science at Southwest Jiaotong University (China) and a BSc (Hons) Applied Ecology and Conservation at Njala University focusing on pollution, informal public transport, and public health in urban Sierra Leone. His publications include work on air pollution, informal public transport in sub-Saharan Africa, and public health in urban informal settlements in Sierra Leone.

Within the Flourish project, he contributes local research knowledge, field experience, and contextual understanding from Sierra Leone. He is particularly interested in how climate risk, environmental change, and urban inequality intersect in growing African cities and communities.