COLOMBO, 6 July 2007 (IRIN) - Buffeted by recurring floods, droughts and epidemics, Sri Lanka has begun tracking the social and economic impact of disasters over three decades in a bid to reduce the effects of future calamities.

The 2004 tsunami catastrophe was the island's most devastating, with more than 39,000 lives lost, but smaller disasters over the years have plagued the Indian Ocean island, causing significant deaths and heavy losses in agriculture and infrastructure.

An online database of disasters that have affected Sri Lanka since 1974 is being compiled by the government's Disaster Management Centre (DMC) to forecast cyclical occurrences and develop prevention strategies as well as improve post-disaster relief and response.

"This database will help policymakers make investments in disaster reduction more efficiently, and relief providers will be able to identify vulnerable areas to target their programmes," U. W. L. Chandradasa, the DMC's director of mitigation and technology, told IRIN.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP), Sri Lanka, is coordinating the DMC's Historical Disaster Information System project with the UNDP regional centre in Bangkok, Thailand, which has so far provided US$40,000 in funding.

Key causes of disasters

According to the DMC's preliminary report on the information collated up to April 2007, the seven disasters that have affected the country most are epidemics, animal attacks, floods, fire, droughts, landslides and cyclones.

The long-running ethnic conflict which has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Sri Lankans is not included in the database's list of some 28 disasters.

While the tsunami caused an unprecedented loss of lives over a few hours, cyclones have killed some 2,344 people since 1974. Epidemics, with malaria heading the list, have caused the deaths of 1,384 and just over a thousand people have died in animal attacks, including elephant rampages and snakebite.

"The systematic tracking of small and medium disasters [which do not hit the headlines of international or even national media] along with detailed data about large-scale disasters will provide the necessary disaster intelligence to keep a tab on emerging patterns of disaster risk and look at the underlying causes," says the preliminary report.

The western coastal district of Colombo, the most densely populated of the island's 25 districts, has recorded the most disasters with Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Kalutara following closely, the report shows. However, the district which records the highest number of deaths, 26,346, is northeastern Mullaitivu followed by Ampara and Batticaloa, both in the east.

Droughts, which statistics indicate peak every three or four years, have withered some 530,685 hectares of crops and 303,957 hectares of paddy fields, while floods have destroyed and damaged almost 195,000 houses. Some Rs 2.3 billion (US$20.65 million) has been spent on providing relief, most of it going to communities affected by droughts, floods, cyclones and the tsunami.

Data collection

Data was initially collected last year from archived reports appearing in two government-owned newspapers, the English language Daily News and Dinamina, a Sinhala daily, with 1974 selected as the base year in which relatively comprehensive disaster reporting appears.

These reports were cross-checked, wherever possible, with records available in local government offices, with the first round of research completed in April this year.

Provincial-level information was provided by local authorities and national data by seven government departments, including the Department of Meteorology, the Health Ministry's epidemiological unit and the Department of Social Services.

However, the DMC warns that relying mainly on media reports for much of its data up to the 1990s has often resulted in sketchy information on the specific effects of disasters at the local level.

"Media reports contain very little detailed information on impacts on infrastructure, agriculture, river flood protection systems, water supply, power and energy, communication, education, health and industry," says the DMC.

Accuracy of data

The agency points out that sometimes information derived from different government sources about a disaster also contains discrepancies.

"We have a problem with the accuracy of the historical data because there was no proper format for keeping records," says Dinesh Rajapakse, the UNDP technical officer in charge of the database.

But the current systematic monitoring and collection of data and regular reporting that has started at the district level are helping the DMC create a vulnerability atlas as well as disaster preparedness and mitigation plans, Rajapakse added.

The DMC is using a disaster data collection and analysis tool, known in the trade as DesInventar, which has been used widely in the Caribbean, Latin America and South Asian countries like Nepal and Indonesia. The next move for the DMC is to train more local officials in incident reporting and data collection and provide updated information to government agencies so that they can analyse impacts and trends.

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