The Guru Sri Lanka - Academic Blogs and Articles

Maritime Domain Awareness - Effective Sharing of Information in Maritime Domain   Information sharing is often seen as the key collective mechanism in maritime sector due considering the challenges facing at the movement. A secure maritime environment can only be achieved when information is shared among maritime stake holders in a comprehensive manner. These stake holders might be nations, military and civil authorities, international organizations, etc. Close cooperation and communication between government and the private sector is a critical means of enhancing maritime situational awareness through information sharing. From a legal standpoint, information sharing can actually be quite complicated. The line between information sharing and intelligence sharing is often quite thin. Once a piece of information becomes classified by a government, sharing it becomes much more legally challenging – even within that government. In the context of maritime information sharin...

Anti Smuggling Operations - Maritime Challenges and Security Concerns Maritime Domain can be interpreted as all areas and things of, on, under, relating to, adjacent to, or bordering on a sea, ocean, or other navigable waterway, including all maritime related activities, infrastructure, people, cargo, and vessels and other conveyances. Due to its complexity and vastness, Maritime Domain is particularly vulnerable to misuse and disruption by many entities such as individuals, organizations, and nation states. According to the statistics approx. 80 percent of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the shoreline. Yet the vast majority of people are unaware on the importance of maritime domain and key role played by the shipping industry, which is largely hidden from view. Basically that because of lack of knowledge in that field and nations are not utilizing the available maritime resources effectively. It is observed that commonly there are no any effective mechani...

Mitigating Maritime Blindness The right of vessel to travel freely in international waters engage in innocent transit passage and have access to ports is an essential elements of international security while safeguarding interests of other nations. Despite many advances made in maritime surveillance and intelligence gathering, the oceans are still exploited for a plethora of illegal activities both by state and non state actors many gaps and ungoverned space remain in the global commons. Managing maritime security is a challenges endeavor. However cooperation and collaboration among global stakeholders could provide solutions to such challenges by sharing information and thereby creating real time picture. For that, it requires a region centric collaborative maritime security construct. Addressing these challenges, like piracy, smuggling, illegal fishing and transnational terrorism demands timely and accurate and actionable information along with forces available to resp...

Floods in Sri Lanka 2017 Sri Lanka became a victim of devastating natural disasters during recent past making a dramatic impact on mankind and living hood on Sri Lankan soil. Recent chain of natural disasters occurred in the month of May 2017 resulted from heavy southwest monsoon was worsened by arriving of Cyclone Mora, causing number of floods and landslides throughout Sri Lanka. The flood affected almost fifteen districts displacing around six hundred thousand people. Nearly two hundred and fifty people were killed and hundred and thirty people were missing due to the flood. The series of hazards hit its peak with landslide at Meethotamulla garbage dump in 14th of April 2017, taking its toll on 26 lives and left over 1,500 homeless and displaced people. Sri Lanka was alerted as a disaster porn country with Tsunami hit in 2014 loosing thousands of mankind and taking a massive impact on the country’s profile and Sri Lanka barely could stand up from junks of deadliest waves, t...