International Conference on Social Sciences 2013
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Item Terminological issues in the field of disaster management: an overview(Culture, Globalization and the Developing World, 2nd ICSS, 2013) Amarasinghe, A.G.Terminologies can be considered as the key driving force of any field of studies or development programs. Significant number of terminology is in use in the field of disaster management at present. The field of disaster management attracts the interest of all strata of the society due to many reasons. Parallel to this trend, new terminologies are being produced rapidly while definition for existing terms changing at alarming rate. This situation is obvious across all over the world. Disasters cannot be managed without strong cooperation and clear understanding among different parties. The shifting the central meaning of terms and accumulating large number of new terminologies will tend to create various types of communicating issues. This would result to be unsuccessful the efforts made to reduce the impacts of disasters. In order to secure the unity among all stakeholders and strength the collective effort in reducing the impacts of disasters, use of terminologies with universally accepted unique meaning is important. The broad objective of this paper is to trace the different meanings exist for one term and identify the issues pertaining to definitions of selected terms. Literature survey and the interviews with key stakeholders is the main data collecting method of this study. Interest of maintaining the differences among countries and scientists has become a key factor to develop issues pertaining to terminologies related to field of disaster management.Item Disasters in Sri Lanka: not popular yet impact is enormous(Culture, Globalization and the Developing World, 2nd ICSS, 2013) Amarasinghe, A.G.Sri Lanka is prone to both natural and manmade disasters as other countries. Floods, cyclones, landsides and droughts have been considered as the major natural disasters in the country. Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act, No 13 of 2005 has identified twenty one (21) types of natural and manmade disasters. Except disasters consider as major, others are not popular among policy makers, planners, general public and other groups of relevant parties. But, the impacts of unpopular disasters in the list listed in the Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act are enormous in terms of several facets. And also, there are many other incidents that influence Sri Lanka are not still included into the national list of disasters and disaster management strategies. The broad objective of this paper is to discuss the reason or reasons for the dilemma on different levels of popularity among disasters in Sri Lanka. Literature survey and case studies employed to gather data. Both basic quantitative and qualitative methods used to analyze data. Problems relating to disaster management policy in Sri Lanka can be considered as key reason of grouping disasters into major or minor category. Other than this definition of the term ?disaster?, level of awareness on the impacts of disasters, intensity of the problems of basic needs, visions of politicians, nature of relationships among institutions and scientists and interest of mass media are the other reasons to be a disaster as popular or unpopular. Identifying the real impact of disasters that exist in the country would help to categories disasters ensuring the future goals of sustainable development in Sri Lanka.