Lessons Learned from Interventions of External Organizations in Disaster Management: A Case Study of Floods in Kalutara, Sri Lanka

In 2016, 2017 and 2018, Sri Lanka witnessed extreme rains that triggered flooding in many districts. The number of victims of 2018 flood was around 150,000 which shows a significant decrease compared to the events of 2016 and 2017 where the affected population were 340,000 and 700,000 respectively. Several external organizations provided their supports via funding, relief and rehabilitation mechanisms during these consecutive disasters. It needs to evaluate current Disaster Management Mechanisms, practiced in Sri Lanka, to investigate the involvement of external organizations, as well as how well these organizations perform within the existing mechanism. This research conducted a survey in Kalutara, a flood-prone area in the Western province of Sri Lanka. Further, it explored the behaviour of local communities, using Hofstede insights, humanitarian involvement in disaster management framework, involvement of external organizations, and then evaluated the effectiveness of external organizations' involvements in different disaster management stages. This chapter finds that Sri Lanka does well in the emergency response stage within the disaster management process, due to the involvement of external organizations, even though their scopes of getting involved at the decision-making level is not significant.