A BRIEF OVERVIEW ON THE USE OF REMOTE SENSING FOR

DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN SRI LANKA

Abstract Summary: Sri Lanka is prone to different kinds of hazards such as floods, drought, landslide
and cyclone throughout the history and has experienced many losses to life and property due to these disasters.
With the recent development in the remote sensing technology, it has been successfully utilized for disaster
mitigation, all over the world. Government of Sri Lanka has taken several initiatives to mitigate damages
caused due to disasters and has been utilizing remote sensing technology more efficiently and effectively for
disaster management. This paper attempts to discuss the hazard risks in Sri Lanka, initiatives taken by the
government to mitigate the damages, how remote sensing is used for disaster management in Sri Lanka, the
challenges it faces in the process and some recommendations to improve the usage.
Keywords: Remote Sensing, Hazards, Disaster management, Geo information system, Satellite imagery

1. INTRODUCATION
Sri Lanka is a tropical island located between 5 and 10 north latitude in the Indian Ocean, just
below the Bay of Bengal and endowed with year-round warm weather, moderated by ocean winds
and considerable moisture. Sri Lanka's climate can be described as tropical, and quite hot where the
average temperature ranges from a low of 16 C (60.8 F) in the Central Highlands (1900m above
mean sea level) to a high of 32 C (89.6 F) in the northeast coastal lowlands while the average
yearly temperature of the country, as a whole, ranges from 28 to 30 C (82.4 to 86.0 F). The mean
annual rainfall of Sri Lanka varies from under 900 mm in the dry zone (the eastern, south eastern
northern and north western parts of Sri Lanka) to over 5000 mm in the wet zone (west and south
western parts of Sri Lanka). Moreover, the rainfall pattern of the island is marked by four seasons
and greatly influenced by the monsoon winds of Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. Majority of Sri
Lankas terrain is consisted of low to flat rolling plains, largely in the dry zone, and mountains in the
southern interior and central parts of the island.
These topographical and climatic characteristics of Sri Lanka makes it frequently vulnerable to
hazards like drought, floods, cyclone/high winds and landslide while its position in the Indian ocean
has made Sri Lanka less vulnerable to disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. However, the Indian
Ocean tsunami of 2004 which had a devastation impact on Sri Lanka has highlighted that Sri Lanka
is also vulnerable to low-frequency, high impact events which cause extensive damage. At the same
time, Sri Lanka, being a tropical island, does not experiences any disasters related to snow fall and
also is safe from volcano eruptions as the island does not consist of any volcanoes. Additionally,
some of the other disasters affecting Sri Lanka more commonly, as shown by Ministry of disaster
management, 2014, are lightning strikes, storm surges, coastal erosion, sea level rise, epidemics and
human elephant conflict. The number of lives lost due to some frequently occurring hazards over the
period from 2000 to 2012 is provided in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Number of lives lost due to floods, landslide, cyclone/high winds and lightning from
2000 to 2012
2. INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN SRI LANKA
The institutional frame work in place for disaster management in Sri Lanka includes key centers
such as National Council for Disaster Management and Disaster Management Center situated solely
to implement the provisions of the disaster management act and some other specialized intuitions
and departments such as National Building Research Organization, Department of Meteorology and
Disaster Relief Service Centre etc. Apart from that the ministries which include departments that can
play a pivotal role in disaster mitigation activities are identified beforehand and attributed to the
National Council for Disaster Management as shown in Figure 1, so that these ministries can develop
a good coordination among them when implementing the disaster mitigation programs.

Figure 1 Structure of National Council for Disaster Management (Ministry of disaster management,
2014)
3. USE OF REMOTE SENSING FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN SRI LANKA
Remote Sensing, in a more restricted sense, is known as the science and technology of
acquiring information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact (Fang, 2016).
In current usage, remote sensing uses sensors onboard airborne or space-borne platforms such as
aircrafts, satellites and shuttles etc to gather information, mostly on earths surface and atmosphere
by means of propagated signals through electromagnetic radiation. Remote sensing has become an
indispensable tool for disaster management throughout the world due to its reliability ability to
monitor phenomena happens in places which is difficult to access by humans and consistency as a
source of information. However, in case of Sri Lanka, remote sensing is yet a relatively new science
and at present it had been recognized as very important tool for disaster mitigation by the policy

makers and as a result, attempts have been made to facilitate the institutions in place for disaster
management with necessary infrastructure to utilize remote sensing and geo information systems
(GIS) more efficiently.
Departments and institutions responsible for implementing disaster management plan in Sri
Lanka utilize remote sensing and GIS applications basically to achieve three objectives. Those are
national risk profiling, emergency disaster monitoring and post disaster damage assessments.
Under national risk profiling, the main activity conducted is hazard and risk mapping of floods,
drought, landslide, storm surge, tsunami, sea level rise and coastal erosion. These maps are useful to
produce early warnings to public and reduce vulnerability. Furthermore, they help to determine
evacuation routes, time and infrastructure to be used during a hazard. One such example for flood
inundation map which was created corresponding to year 2003 flood event of Gin river basin, Galle
district is shown in Figure 2 and it was created as a collaborative work of Survey Department,
Irrigation Department and Asian Institution of Technology where the required satellite data was
obtained from the satellite ALOS of Japan Aero Exploration Agency (JAXA) (Premasiri et al., 2010).
In addition to Gin river basin flood inundation maps were created to several other districts in Sri
Lanka

Figure 2 Flood inundation map of gin river basin (Premasiri et al., 2010)
Figure 3 provides an example for using remote sensing technology for emergency disaster
monitoring in Sri Lanka. It shows the flood images obtained by Disaster Management Center of Sri
Lanka from German Aero Space Center (DLR) on 21 st of May 2016 to estimate flood areas
progressing and declining along Kelani River during the severe floods occurred in Colombo district,
Sri Lanka.

Figure 3 Flood inundation map of gin river basin (Premasiri et al., 2010)

In addition to emergency disaster monitoring, these kinds of images were also used to estimate
the flood affected area and damaged caused by the floods which goes under the task of post disaster
damage assessment. December 2004 tsunami took Sri Lanka by surprise making it the worst natural
disaster ever experienced in Sri Lanka and satellite images and remote sensing technology proved
useful in post disaster damage assessment where the unprecedented devastation caused to coastal
regions of Sri Lanka were estimated by comparing the satellite images of the same location observed
before and just after the tsunami disaster (Miura et al., 2005)
4. CHALLENGERS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Some of the major challenges faced on the use of remote sensing technology for disaster
management in Sri Lanka are the limitations in data accessibility to high resolution imageries due to
lack of cutting edge technical facilities, not having sufficient amount of data from the field surveys
for validation purposes, limitations in the specialized technical staff particularly in the government
sector who are capable of handling high tech equipments, restrictions in data sharing and unethical
usage of shared data for commercial usage etc.
The challenges related to data sharing and limitations in access to data can be overcome to
some extent by setting up a national level agency to collect, process, develop and disseminated geo
referencing data while issues related to unethical usage of shared data can be addressed by setting up
common standards among data users and implementing a proper mechanism to share the data
effectively. Furthermore, establishing concrete connection with international satellite data providers
to obtain real time satellite images to utilize in emergency disaster monitoring will reduce the
limitations face in accessing high resolution imageries. Moreover, the challenges related to
limitations of the technical staff need to be addressed by conducting adequate long and midterm
training programs on usage of remote sensing and geo referring technology. Furthermore, increasing
the exposure of local technical staffs to international training and inviting international experts to
conduct training sessions to them will improve and ensure the technical knowhow of the local staff s.
REFERENCES
Ministry of disaster management, 2014: Sri Lanka comprehensive disaster management programme 2014-2018
Fang, C., 2016: Lecture1: Introduction to remote sensing. Lecture notes, Institute of Remote Sensing and
Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
Premasiri, S., M, Bogahawathta, B., C., P, 201o: A Revisit on the Structural Flood Mitigation Measure with the
Application of Remote Sensing and GIS in Gin River Basin, Sri Lanka , 4 th joint project team meeting for
sentinel Asia, 2011
Miura, H., Wijeyewickrema, A., C, Inoue, S, 2005: Evaluation of tsunami damage in the eastern part of Sri
Lanka due to the 2004 Sumatra earthquake using remote sensing technique, http://www.taodocs.com/p61445126.html.