Post tsunami recovery capacity gaps in Sri Lanka

Poor response capacity has been identified as a major inhibitor for successful post tsunami
recovery attempts in Sri Lanka. Despite level of incentives aid and help which have been
received from the international communities, both governmental and nongovernmental
organisations, have evidently failed to deliver expected levels of performance in post tsunami
recovery activities. It is of utmost importance to identify and overcome the related capacity gaps
if Sri Lanka is ever to recover from the December 2004 devastation and any future disasters.
Within the light of this, as the first step towards recovery, the country must fully understand the
nature and scale of its capacity gaps related to the post disaster recovery.
Addressing this issue, the EURASIA (European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage)
international collaborative research programme has conducted a series of interviews with key
personnel in Sri Lanka to explore the nature and magnitude of this problem. The main objective
of this paper is to present the outcome of these key expert interviews highlighting the priority
attention areas and possible actions towards minimising the post tsunami recovery capacity gaps
in Sri Lanka