International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences (IRSPAS)
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Item GIS as a tool to find the suitable place for construction of water tanks in Karuwalabadda, Puttalam District, Sri Lanka(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Vaigunthan, T.; Lansakara, L. M. A. P.; Weerasinghe, V. P. A.The United Nations has long been addressing the global water crisis caused by insufficient water supply to satisfy basic human needs and growing demands on the world's water resources to meet human, commercial and agricultural needs. Although there are lots of water bodies in Sri Lanka some parts of the country suffer with a severe water crisis. Karuwalabadda is a Grama Niladari Division (GND) in Puttalam district in Sri Lanka which has 135 houses and more than 245 families and there are no any surface water bodies observed in the area. The most considerable problem in that area is the lack of drinking water due to longer period of drought except 4 -5 months. Many organizations and students from different universities tried to help them as short term solutions by distributing water in bowsers and bottles. There were several drawbacks of these solutions such as water distribution coverage is changing, water distribution does not occur throughout the day, higher fuel waste for water bowsers, there is no specific route for distribution of water and plastic bottles make environmental problem etc. Hence previous solutions are not sustainable, it is proposed to construct tanks permanently in different locations of the area. The suitable locations to construct water tanks were found out using ArcGIS software for the construction of tanks with minimum environmental impacts. From the GND map of Sri Lanka, Karuwalabadda study area was extracted and digitized with houses and main roads. Buffer was done 500m away from houses and 75m away from roads and then reclassified. Land use map of Karuwalabadda was converted from vector to raster. Surface water layer was not considered because there are no any surface water body in Karuwalabadda GND. Criteria for the suitable locations were bare land, 500 m away from houses and 75 m away from main roads. The final suitable area to construct water tanks map was prepared by assigning weightage to different thematic maps as 60% to land use map, 20% to houses and 20% to roads and then they were superimposed by weighted overlay tool. Final map was classified into 03 classes as suitable, moderately suitable and not suitable area. From suitable area 07 locations were selected to construct the water tanks. It was observed that constructing seven tanks of capacity 3000 L in the selected areas the water need of the whole village can be fulfilled. Proposed number of families for one tank can be approximately 22 families. Society based maintenance can be an effective way to maintain these tanks and by handing over these tanks to Preadeshiya Sabha water can be filled once a week. GIS technology is an effective and efficient tool for solving any location based environmental problems in the world and it has more potential to be used further to overcome many environmental challenges.Item Identify a potential location for wind power plant in Jaffna district, Sri Lanka using GIS techniques(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Weerasinghe, V. P. A.; Dilshara, R. M. P.; Liyanage, P. M.; Perera, G. L. D. N.Wind energy is one of the renewable energy sources in the Sri Lanka. Currently, there are some active wind power stations located in Central region, Hambanthota, and Puttalam. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that there are nearly 5000 km2 of windy areas with good-to-excellent wind resource potential in Sri Lanka after accounting for excluded lands like national parks, nature reserves, archaeological and cultural sites. The windy land represents about 6 % of the total land area (65,600 km2) of Sri Lanka. Hence the population increment has become a major problem on electricity demand and the hydro power is limited especially in dry season, this study is focused on finding a suitable location to establish a wind power plant in Jaffna District using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The land was selected considering criteria namely; the distance from obstructions as 150 m, the distance from Coastal area as 100 m, the height from buildings and trees as 9 m and 1.5 acres of land area was considered as providing 2 MW of power. The land use maps were collected from Survey Department, Sri Lanka and the wind data was taken using wind finder software. Under the methodology, the wind speed data of selected points were clipped to Jaffna district map. The wind speed, land use, terrain, building area and nature reserve maps were reclassified and assigned weights using weighted overlay tool in ArcGIS software to derive the suitability map. The weights were given as wind speed (70%), land use (15%), building area (10%), nature reserves (4%) and terrain (1%). According to the results shown in the map, the wind speed was high in Delft Island and Nainatheeve and poor in Chundikulam. When considering all the criteria, Delft island (5000 ha) should be the best place and the land area of 200 ha can be used for the construction of the wind power stationItem Identification of suitable areas to cultivate Aloe vera in Kegalle District, Sri Lanka using GIS(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Dissanayake, C. T. M.; Weerasinghe, V. P. A.Aloe vera (Aloe barbadensis Miller) is used in ayurvedic medicine, pharmaceuticals, cosmetic products and also as a food product such as drinks or mixer with yoghurt. It is getting popular with the improvements in technology of harvesting and processing the product. In Sri Lanka, it is popular as a home garden crop, but not as a crop growing in large-scale. Most Sri Lankans are less aware of getting an income from Aloe vera. Therefore, the aim of this study is to make Aloe vera cultivation popular by identifying suitable areas to cultivate Aloe vera in Kegalle district, which was the study area of this research. Data analysis was done by using ArcGIS software tools to select the suitable areas. The criteria to grow Aloe vera successfully were selected using relevant literature. They were namely land uses such as coconut or bare lands, annual rainfall range as 1800 mm-2300 mm and annual temperature range as 25 °C - 26 °C. Those criteria were considered as most favorable factors to grow Aloe vera successfully with demanding leaf thicknesses. Land use data was collected from the Survey Department, Colombo and rainfall and temperature data were collected from the Meteorology Department, Colombo. Rainfall and temperature layers were developed by using Kriging interpolation technique in spatial geostatistics in ArcGIS software. Then land use layer, rainfall layer and temperature layer were overlaid using spatial analysis tools to identify the most suitable area, moderately suitable areas and not suitable areas. Kelegama and Rambukkana DSD areas are the most suitable areas to grow Aloe vera in Kegalle district. The final map generated from this study will be useful for extension/field officers of the Department of Agriculture, to enhance the awareness of people in Kegalle district about suitable places to grow Aloe vera in order to get an extra income as well as to get the maximum utility of the land.