Landslide Risk Assessment and Mapping and the “Land Bank”
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 10:43:00 BST
GDRC’s Professors Dilanthi Amaratunga & Richard Haigh were the visiting experts to provide guidance and on the Risk mapping methodology associated with NBRO’s Landslide Risk Assessment and Mapping initiative.
NBRO has been preparing landslide hazard zonation maps since 1992 and these landslide hazard maps display the distribution of severity of potential landslide hazard in a given area. Based on this work, risk maps to 1:10,000 scale will be developed taking in to consideration of potential damages to human lives and properties. These maps will lead to further investigations and proper planning of risk mitigation actions. Such maps serve as a tool to guide investments in development and utilization of lands susceptible to landslides.
Human Settlements Mapping involve the identification of the settlements pattern and its vulnerabilities and the preparation of a User Guide for identify possible resettlement lands.
Related parameters have been identified for assessing the vulnerability and capacity of the human settlements. These parameters include: Building Density: Open spaces: Percentage of forestry type land uses: and Rate of productivity of natural/market land uses.
Photo: Recent landslide in Aranayake, Sri Lanka
They provided further expert advice on NBRO’s Identification of Potential Lands for Development (Land Bank) initiative.
The Land Bank is pool of lands that can allocated for safer developments. Lank Bank initialized as gap filling activity of the landslide hazard, landslide risk and development decision making. It is intended to identify the possible lands for development with certain limitations and will help for development planning decision makers to adhere the conceptual development framework in Landslide prone districts.
It will be a base document for: Development agencies; Rural development activities: Resettlement activities: Define mitigation importunacies and Other major land use or development activities.
The project will be implemented for ten districts declared by NBRO as landslide prone. Pilot study for the methodology development will be implemented in Badulla District. 1:10,000 scale will be selected for spatial analysis due to availability of data and its format.
National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) of Sri Lanka is the premier research and development institute established in 1984 has now grown in to a successful technical service provider and research & development institution where experts from multiple disciplines have teamed up and dedicated to create a disaster free built environment for the nation. GDRC Professors visited NBRO upon invitation of: Dr. Asiri Karunawardena, Director General of NBRO and Kishan Sugathapala, Director, Human Settlement Planning and Training of NBRO.
