Living With Nature: Flood Risk Mitigation Strategies in Vernacular Dwellings of Rathnapura, Sri Lanka

Vernacular communities everywhere in the world, live in the midst of natural surroundings. Invariably, thus, they face the natural disasters such as floods, if the dwellings are constructed near waterways. Responding to the floods need careful strategies. There are frequent floods in the Rathnupra district of Sri Lanka, where many vernacular settlements exist. In order to mitigate flood risks, local communities have devised successful flood risk mitigation strategies in relation to construction of dwellings. However the adaptive capacity of the local people is not well understood as limited research has been conducted on their ability to mitigate flood risks. In this context, this study examines the flood mitigation strategies adopted by the residents of vernacular dwellings in the high flood risk areas in Ratnapura. The study examines 15 case studies in three flood risk zones of Rathnapura. The dwellings have been constructed from 1800 to 2005, and this has enabled producing a chronological analysis of development of materials and construction practices in mitigating flood risk in this area. The study takes the new guidelines for flood risk mitigation in Rathnapura as a framework to analyze the vernacular knowledge demonstrated in the case studies. The planning, spatial configuration, documented for the 15 case studies. The study concludes and that construction the methods were single-storey dwellings constructed in the 1800 and early 1900 demonstrate many of the flood mitigation features required by modern guidelines. The study also emphasizes the lack of attention to services such as plumbing and electricity in the case studies as well as in the modern guidelines.