Colabuono-McDonagh, Liam-Elio
(2025)
Brick by brick: tracking kiln regulatory compliance and liberation across Punjab and Haryana using remote sensing methods.
MRes thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
This thesis provides a geospatial analysis of brick kiln regulation, aiming to link this authoritative geospatial data to recent liberation reports to uncover factors and visual indicators of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) practices. The brick kilns Southern Asia has been recognised as a key source of environmental and social harm. Researchers using remote sensing methods have identified negative impacts of brick kiln production including air pollution (Arbain and Imasu, 2019; Brooks et al, 2023), crop yield decline (Adrees et al, 2016), and health risks from emissions and materials associated with brick kiln work (Khan et al, 2019; David et al, 2020; Ahmad et al, 2020; Akram et al, 2022; Hamid et al, 2022; Brooks et al, 2023).
Significantly fewer research articles have covered the nature of brick kiln work and MSHT. This lack of research into MSHT practices in the brick kilns follows a trend identified by Ekmen and Kocaman (2024), showing a lack of engagement between Geospatial facilitated sustainable development research and MSHT. Their paper identifies only 1.2% (3 out of 308 research articles) focused on geospatial methods and sustainable development aimed at informing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8. SDG 8 aims to “promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all” (United Nations, 2024); within this goal, target 8.7 aims to end MSHT practices by 2025 (Boyd et al, 2018).
SDG 8 requires an increased research focus on gaining geospatial intelligence on how to model the relationships between businesses, social-environmental conditions, and MSHT. Recently, researchers at the University of Nottingham have mapped the entirety of the “brick belt”, detecting 66,455 brick kilns across the region spanning Pakistan, Northern India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. India, the focus of this thesis, contains 69.7% of the brick kilns within the brick belt (Boyd et al, 2021). The thesis analysed two Indian states, Punjab and Haryana, using the established environmental regulatory documentation of brick kilns to identify links between regulatory compliance and MSHT prevalence. The hypothesis is that brick kilns that comply with environmental regulations will also be less likely to employ MSHT practices. To test this, a binary classification system was designed using distance measurements from the kilns against regulation specifications. Five regulation factors were captured and output as a binary score from 1 – 10000. Using this regulation classification, brick kilns were then analysed for instances of liberation. The second aim is to link this regulation compliance model to liberation data to find specific regulatory failures that suggest a higher chance of modern slavery practices occurring.
This framework aims to identify registered formal brick kilns and informal kilns as the sector is heavily underregulated and organised (Boyd et al, 2018; 2021). Due to the nature of this unorganised structure, there is no accessible register of formal brick kilns. This thesis aims to create a database of regulatory compliance for kilns using data from Boyd et al (2018:2021), Li et al (2019), and the GeoAI database (UNDP, 2023) to explore links between regulatory compliance and MSHT. The methodology is inspired by Mondal et al (2018) and Lee et al (2021) who produced regulation compliance studies for the environmental factors of the brick kilns.
Overall, the thesis reviews 5,835 kilns, identifying them with a regulation compliance code, with results showing that 15.5% of brick kilns in Punjab in 2020 and 19.2% in 2024 pass all 5 regulation factors. For Haryana, regulation compliance rates are higher, with 22.1% of brick kilns passing all tested regulations. The method proves that regulatory compliance can be accurately assessed from remote sensing data. However, the thesis cannot provide conclusive findings for the second aim as a lack of quality and quantity of liberation data makes traditional statistical methods like regression analysis and correlation testing ineffective. The paper also finds incidences of “clean” kilns also using MSHT. The thesis concludes regulation factors may prove a stronger indication of MSHT prevalence with higher-quality data. Further research is required to identify visual and regulatory factors that can be used to predict the use of modern slavery within the Indian brick kilns.
| Item Type: |
Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
(MRes)
|
| Supervisors: |
Boyd, Doreen
Foody, Giles |
| Keywords: |
Brick kilns, Modern Slavery, Human Trafficking, Remote sensing, Satellite imagery, Regulatory compliance, Earth Observation |
| Subjects: |
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography |
| Faculties/Schools: |
UK Campuses > Faculty of Social Sciences, Law and Education > School of Geography |
| Item ID: |
81703 |
| Depositing User: |
Colabuono-Mcdonagh, Liam
|
| Date Deposited: |
11 Dec 2025 04:40 |
| Last Modified: |
11 Dec 2025 04:40 |
| URI: |
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/81703 |
Actions (Archive Staff Only)
 |
Edit View |
Tools
Tools
