Thorbjorn Gaustadsaether, Ambassador of Norway to Sri Lanka, handed over some equipment’s to Mr. Miyanwala, Secretary to the Minister of Disaster Management to be used in the Disaster Risk Reduction program. The event took place during the inaugural session of the National Building Research Organisation, International Symposium 2016

Under the Technical Cooperation facility, the Norwegian Embassy has supported the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) to work together with the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) on disaster management issues since 2012. NGI and NBRO have worked very well together and made use of advanced Norwegian technology such as ground penetrating radars (GPR) and early warning systems through automatic weather stations which helped Sri Lanka in their disaster risk reduction efforts.

A tailor made high computing machine, which was recently handed over to NBRO, under this technical cooperation will now be used to analyze vast amount of data collected from various landslide prone areas in Sri Lanka. The  advanced borehole antennas handed over yesterday will be  used to scan the ground between two boreholes. These antennas have been especially fabricated at NGI for use by NBRO to perform geotechnical investigations at geo-hazard sites and at upcoming infrastructure projects in the country.

In his speech, Ambassador Thorbjorn Gaustadsaether said he is  happy to know that this project continues successfully, in the area of climate change and natural hazards and  this cooperation is a very good example of how experience and knowledge successfully can be shared between institutions.