Disaster Management


Vital Information
  - Introduction
  - Scientific Background on Tsunami
  - Sri Lanka Country Profile
  - Weather and Climate
  - Health
  - Sri Lanka Maps
  - Mapserver and Information Exchange
  - Relief Agencies and Efforts
  - Feedback
  Institutional Setting
  Hazards and Hazard Maps
  Exposure and Vulnerability

Exposure and Vulnerabilty

Vulnerability can be assessed for people, economic activities and infrastructure.

People

Sri Lanka has a population of 19.7 million (2003) which is distributed unevenly.

Food security measures a community’s ability to withstand hazards as well as its resilience to the hazard. Food security calculated by WFP Sri Lanka office in 2002, is based on availability of food, access to food and utilization of food, based on generally accepted food insecurity models. Food insecurity vulnerability shows the distribution of population who are likely to be worse affected, and with longer term consequences, from the hazard.

Economic Activity

The provincial GDP map shows that the lions share of GDP comes from the Western Province.

The main crop of Sri Lanka is Paddy, which is generally cultivated twice a year. The major cash crops are tea, rubber, coconut and spices. (Plantation map) The agrarian economy is highly succeptible to floods and droughts.

The major industries are textile & apparel, food & beverage processing, chemical & rubber and mining & minerals. Industry is heavily concentrated in the Western Province. Floods affect the industries in the west of Sri Lanka while drought in Central Highlands can affect industry drastically through deficits in hydro-power production.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure development too reflects a pattern of heavy development in the Western Province with subsidiary development in the metropolitan districts of Kandy and Galle.

There is a high concentration of infrastructure facilities in the District of Colombo. This skewness is largely due to the heavy concentration of telecommunication facilities in Colombo. Electricity and telephone facilities have been severely disrupted in the Northern Province due to the war, and there are no estimates of recent conditions. Thus interpretation of the infrastructure index for these areas needs to be tempered with caution.

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