We focuses on the future as an opportunity to renew the commitment as a National University of the country to broad-based and long-term disaster preparedness while producing professionals essential for the field of Disaster Management. With the experience over the past decade, IHRA realized that there is a gap between academia and practitioners. Accordingly, there is a clear need of reinforcing the collaboration between the academia and related industry in order to face the future challenges dealing with disasters while establishing integrated approaches on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) for sustainable development of the nation. As a national responsibility, to empower the society with adequate knowledge, IHRA expanding its responsibilities, was held the National Conference on “Geospatial Science and Disaster Management” on 19^th January 2016 in collaboration with national and international authorities and other relevant organizations.

We are delighted to extend a warm welcome to all participants of the National Conference on Geospatial Sciences & Disaster Management-2016, hosted by the Institute of Human Resource Advancement (IHRA) at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute. Under the visionary leadership of our Director, this event marks a significant stride forward in our ongoing journey of development and growth. As IHRA organizes this event for the second time in its history, we are thrilled to contribute to the advancement of Geospatial Sciences and Disaster Management, two rapidly evolving disciplines with immense potential for contributing to Sri Lanka’s economic and social progress. This conference serves as a platform for fruitful discussions and knowledge exchange among scholars and professionals in these fields. By encompassing both theoretical debates and practical considerations, this event contributes significantly to the advancement of these disciplines.

As the initial phase, IHRA introduced the M.Sc. Degree Programme in Disaster Analysis, Management and Mitigation (M.Sc. in DAMM) in year 2013 to produce professionals who are capable to face the challenge of managing disaster successfully. The M.Sc. in DAMM can be effectively used as a learning guide to train the students in key concepts and practices in disaster management while training them to assess the hazard, vulnerability and risks while establishing the preparedness and mitigation. Due to the recent development, geospatial science has become an exceptionally useful tool in the field of disaster management. One of the main challenges which disaster management experts are facing is to monitor the disaster situations, to simulate the complicated disaster occurrence in full accuracy and to come up with better prediction models, for that Geospatial science can be used. Real-time and archives of remotely sensed data can be used very effectively to prepare the historical data base to study the future trends and severity of disasters.