Saturday Feb 21, 2026
Saturday Feb 21, 2026
Saturday, 14 February 2026 00:02 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
 |
| NBRO Director General Eng. (Dr.) Asiri Karunawardena |
By Surya Vishwa
Unplanned housing that places pressure on mountainous land, making it high risk for landslides, and climate change-influenced unpredictability of weather patterns, with a tendency to be extreme, propel us as humans to create policies and systems that are borne out of prudent comprehension, explained National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) Director General Eng. (Dr.) Asiri Karunawardena.
The NBRO is the apex Government institution mandated with research, planning, disaster pre-emption and mitigation concerning geological hazards. An interview was obtained with Eng. Dr. Asiri Karunawardena in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in the recent history of Sri Lanka in November and December 2025, which left scores dead and displaced, impacting houses and livelihoods. Over two months after the calamity, which hit the tourism hubs of the Central Province the hardest, there is the danger of the country falling back into an amnesic state where awakening could well come at the next nightmare of the earth toppling onto our slumber.
In a bid to understand the responsibility of the NBRO, as well as that of the country as a whole in preventing such natural disasters, we met Asiri Karunawardena, a civil engineer by training who holds academic credentials in this discipline, including a Master’s in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Moratuwa and a Doctor of Engineering from Kyoto University in Japan. Both academically and professionally, he has specialised in landslide risk management and integrating disaster risk reduction into national planning.
“When it comes to preventing or reducing risk from nature, it is human activity that has to be monitored first and foremost. Creating public awareness is a number one requirement so that people adopt earth-friendly practices such as having proper drainage systems and avoiding construction on mountain slopes. What is noticed is that most of the impact of the recent landslides subsequent to the heavy rains was in valleys, steep slopes and foothills,” points out Dr. Karunawardena.
“The weather-induced reason for the mountains becoming dislodged is that the rainfall between 26 and 28 November 2025 was comparatively the highest rainfall in Sri Lanka in decades. In some areas such as Nuwara Eliya, the rainfall was well over 350 mm, with similar rainfall levels across almost the entire country. When it comes to hilly areas, this kind of continuous rain impacts slope stability. If there is heavy pressure on the slopes due to human activity such as housing, then this can lead to disasters, with the wet soil loosening its grip,” explains Dr. Karunawardena.
Realistically, preventing, mitigating and managing natural disasters in Sri Lanka is the responsibility not of just one institution but of the entire administrative structure of the country, which has an interconnected role, especially the Central Environmental Authority (CEA), the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB), the Disaster Management Centre (DMC), the Department of Meteorology, the District Disaster Management Coordination Units (DDMCU) and the linked supporting entities including the Irrigation Department, the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency, the Urban Development Authority for its role in safer land use planning, and the Water Supply and Drainage Board for planning and support relevant to disaster risk prevention as well as management.
The high-intensity winds and rainfall that affected Sri Lanka at the end of November 2025 are referred to as Cyclone Ditwah, which caused both flooding in areas of the North and East of the country and landslides in the mountainous Central Province.
How should Sri Lanka be prepared, we asked Eng. Karunawardena, especially as weather patterns have become more erratic and unpredictable, with some expectation of similar rainfall in March and April this year?
This writer, who also currently lives on a mountaintop in Nuwara Eliya, narrated to Dr. Karunawardena the information and instructions that we had received last month from area authorities, which summed up to: ‘stay at your own risk, leave when it rains, stay when it is sunshine.’ I quipped to him the irritated response of a family who earned their daily survival through growing flowers and vegetables, whose house as well as land was severely damaged and who, when last met, were running from pillar to post to obtain Government support.
Amid the confusion and living among huge mounds of soil inside their once comfortable home, when they were told ‘stay when it is sunshine and go when it rains,’ they retorted, ‘Are they telling us to keep a lorry waiting in our backyard?’ However, it is learnt that authorities had previously warned the owners of some of the houses that were impacted not to build on those lands owing to possible high climatic risk. The disregard of the warnings and the construction on these high-risk lands make many householders ineligible to receive financial support from the State for the damage they suffered last November and December.
Dr. Karunawardena acknowledges that the country initially struggled to handle the outcome of such an unprecedented disaster but also states that a system is being developed to avoid confusion of responsibility within Government institutions and to better regulate human activity on mountainous and flood-prone lands.
He asserts that Sri Lanka is working towards long-term collaborations with countries such as Japan, which have advanced technology, related equipment and knowledge to ensure warning and preparedness ahead of climatic disasters.
“The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry has begun working with countries such as Japan, China, India and the US to look at different aspects of preventing or managing extreme climatic occurrences.”
The NBRO Chief points out that the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is working closely with the current Government to assist Sri Lanka in ushering in a well-thought-out blueprint for natural disaster preparedness.
“What we need most is island wide awareness on how we can live upon the earth with minimum harm to nature so that we ourselves will not be harmed. This is an overall factor that is central to the discipline of geotechnical engineering, which is about the behaviour of soil, rock and groundwater and their interrelatedness to structures constructed upon the ground,” Dr. Karunawardena explains.
He further points out that the first major cyclone occurred in 1977 and that subsequently, over the years, some extreme weather was witnessed in 2003, 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2015, but not on the scale of late November 2025.
“We have by now classified the impacted areas into three categories: very high risk, moderate risk and no risk, and the people living in these locales are duly advised. Research into the long-term risk factors in these areas is, however, ongoing,” he states, adding that updated reports are being prepared. In January, many of those impacted in the Central Province were told that they could live on the landslide-affected lands for a maximum of 15 to 20 years and that beyond this timeframe it was not possible to give a guarantee of safety.
In this backdrop, what is his message to the country?
“Please try to live alongside nature with a better understanding and not damage it, which includes not polluting it. We need to create as much awareness as possible on how people can prevent natural disasters through the decisions and actions they take.”
(NOTE: This article is produced as part of our mass media effort to create public awareness on climate change–conscious human existence)
