Sri Lanka disaster management reference handbook 2024

Sri Lanka’s land and people are exposed to various natural and anthropogenic hazards – disease outbreak, drought, earthquake, flooding, fire, hazardous materials incident, heat, landslide, shipping or aviation accident, storm, and tsunami. Not infrequently, national stakeholders are working to address more than one hazard event simultaneously. In recent years, the country’s progress on institutionalizing disaster management has faced obstacles as funding and other resources ran scarce or were diverted to other programs.

This updated Sri Lanka Disaster Management Reference Handbook is a contribution from the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (CFE-DM). It sets out the historic, social, economic, and climatic context for Sri Lanka’s domestic and international action to build resilience to natural and anthropogenic hazards. It provides an overview of the country’s disaster management practices and details the systems in place to help communities cope with emergencies. This handbook is intended to support U.S. armed forces planners and personnel who may be responding to a disaster in Sri Lanka or conducting a disaster response exercise alongside Sri Lankan personnel.