Symposia & Conferences

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Author: search.filters.author.Abeysinghe, A.

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    Use of Neural Networks in archaeology: preservation of Assamese manuscripts
    (International Seminar on Assamese Culture & Heritage, 2018) Abeysinghe, A.; Abeysinghe, Aditya
    Historical documents are engraved as manuscripts ranging from palm leaf manuscripts, metal carvings to paper manuscripts. These manuscripts reveal significant information about yesteryear. Although, there are thousands of such manuscripts, the majority of them are not in good condition. Assam has one of the most ancient and largest collections of manuscripts. Assamese 'manuscripts are bound up with Srimanta Sankardeva (15th–16th century Assamese polymath) as well as his Neo Vaisnavite Movement as the manuscripts were the medium of transmission of the ideals of this religio-cultural movement. At the same time, Assamese are grateful to Sankaradeva and his successors for manuscripts which displayed Assamese culture. This saint-scholar, poet and playwright wrote his compositions on these manuscripts. Assamese consider these manuscripts as objects of veneration. Over the years, manuscripts, especially those in print are prone to decay due to various reasons such as climate (light, heat, dust and humidity), pest attacks and theft. At present, Information Technology (IT) is used for preservation of cultural heritage including preservation of manuscripts, the primary source of historical information. Current methods include use of hyperspectral imaging and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to preserve and scan images to digital format. However, current technologies lack the capability to convert a manuscript to a digital artifact due to improper character identification methodology. As such, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) can be used for classification as well as pattern recognition functions. Therefore, this research paper introduces use of an ANN to identify sections of manuscripts obtained from the Assam region.
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    Conservation and preservation of locomotive heritage in Sri Lanka
    (The International Conference on Land Transportation, Locomotive Heritage and Road Culture - 2017, 2017) Abeysinghe, A.
    Travel and tourism is a large income generator in Sri Lanka. As such, train travel plays a significant role in promoting tourism, rendering tourists local and overseas an exceptional travelling experience as well as a multi-faceted cultural exchange. In Sri Lanka the railways network covers the scenic hill country with exceptional views of verdant hills, pristine beaches and secluded countryside. The railway network in Sri Lanka was constructed on the legendary route in the 19th century. The Viceroy Special which is a vintage steam train built to resemble trains of yesteryear is a locomotive heritage rendering travelers a unique experience of train travel, especially the hill country train ride which is considered as one of the best journeys in the world. But there are many challenges facing the conservation and preservation of locomotive heritage. As the constant movement of the railway engines and carriages will wear out original parts and will have to be replaced leading to destruction of valuable historical and technological nature of the locomotives, there should be better solutions to conserve them. Thus, there should be proper pragmatic solutions to conserve such locomotive heritages without altering the ancient outlook of the engines and carriages or else the ancient nature of such locomotives will be destroyed. In this paper, I will be looking at pragmatic solutions to conserve and preserve locomotive heritage in Sri Lanka considered a valuable heritage of the past.
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    Using neural networks for mobile applications: self-driving tourism
    (The International Conference on Land Transportation, Locomotive Heritage and Road Culture - 2017, 2017) Abeysinghe, A.; Arundathie, Abeysinghe
    At present, tourism and hospitality industries extensively makes use of Information Technology (IT) with the objective of reducing costs, improving operational competence as well as improving the quality of service provided to customers, in order to render a better service for the clients. Thus a new dimension was merged to tourism with the adoption of IT in tourism related services. From e-Marketing to virtual tours applications of IT in tourism are diverse. A recent trend in IT-based tourism can be identified as deploying mobile apps as a part of tourism and capturing user data, to update the services to cope with user demands continuously. Sri Lanka as a developing country has limited street view and tourism cornerstones are highlighted in the Internet. This makes potential users to visit a plethora of websites and related apps to fulfil their demands. Building a centralized app for all key tourism areas based on a variety of options ranging from landscapes to business organizations would allow users to easily navigate, while uploading their own information. This research was conducted as a survey to capture user data and to build an Android application based on the data. The system uses a neural network multi-level perceptron (MLP) with back propagation based on the Android platform as a mechanism of centralizing tourism related services in Sri Lanka.
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    Challenges Facing Preservation and Conservation of Asian Elephants
    (Centre for Asian Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Abeysinghe, A.
    Asian Elephants face near extinction in every place they exist; they lose their struggle for survival due to human-elephant conflicts, lack of food and water for survival, ivory poaching and illegal capture of them for work as well as for tourism. Their habitat has also been reduced due to development. As a result, the population of Asian Elephants has become less and they are isolated. At present, there are only 30,000 – 50,000 elephants in the wild, whereas, it was hundreds of thousands at the turn of the 20th century and they are scattered in habitat in 13 Asian countries. To overcome the challenges facing the preservation and conservation of Asian Elephant, proper action should be taken to alleviate the conflicts between development and wild life conservation. As such, there should be clear strategies such as protecting elephants and their habitat, promoting elephant-friendly policies, monitoring elephant numbers (population), reducing human-elephant conflict, conducting research on elephants to introduce conservation strategies and minimizing threats to elephants and their habitat. Asian Elephants are adaptable in diet and behavior and they can survive in any place from grasslands to rainforests. An elephant eats about 200 kilograms of food per day. This amount cannot be found in one place. Thus, they have to migrate to vast areas to find food and water, especially, during the dry season. Such vast areas are rare in Asian countries which itself is a threat to these elephants. This fact also leads to human-elephant conflicts as they tend to approach villages in search of food. This paper aims to discuss the challenges facing preservation and conservation of Asian Elephants. To understand the magnitude of the human-elephant conflict and focus on the preservation and conservation of Asian Elephants, there should be better mechanisms to mitigate the damage caused by such conflicts.
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    Environmental impact of sustainable tourism in Sri Lanka
    (Centre for Asian Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Abeysinghe, A.
    Tourism and hospitality is a field which involves many sectors including the aviation industry, hotel industry, tourist boards, government ministries and departments as well as national parks and heritage sites. As such, it is a vast field involving many services and products catering to tourists (travellers) and also natural environment. All these have mutually reinforcing objectives to ensure sustainable tourism development. In Sri Lanka, tourism is the nation’s third foreign exchange earner and by the end of the year 2015, this figure is expected to be US$ 3 billion. The majority of tourism activities place extra pressure on environmental resources on which it is based. This is also intensified by present as well as future interests of tourists, tourism organizations and host populations. Without sufficient environmental protection, prospects for development will be weakened. Positive links should be built with the environment while breaching any negative links that may be encountered. There could also be negative links. To overcome this, there should be “trade-offs” between protection or rather conservation and developmental goals. It is the duty of the government and other stakeholders to safeguard the environment while developing necessary infrastructure for tourism. Otherwise, tourism will become a major destructive process destroying natural resources which it is based on. Those responsible for tourism management have a great responsibility for sustainable tourism and they should focus on protecting the environment, a vital factor of tourism development. Sri Lanka being a country rich in natural environment, bio-diversity as well as rich cultural heritage has to protect its resources; the major tourism attractions, while developing necessary infrastructure. In this paper, the focus will be mainly on the “Environmental impacts of sustainable tourism in Sri Lanka”, the problems associated with it and how to overcome such problems in the long term as well as the short term.