Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has stressed that geospatial data has become a critical national asset, highlighting the surveying profession's essential contributions to infrastructure, land management, and disaster resilience during the Surveyors' Institute of Sri Lanka's centenary celebration.
Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya addressed the centenary celebration of the Surveyors' Institute of Sri Lanka in Colombo, underscoring the profession's foundational importance to the nation's development agenda. She emphasized that beyond technical competence, surveyors must demonstrate integrity, adaptability, and innovation alongside a commitment to public service. The profession's scope extends across multiple critical areas, including sustainable development initiatives, efficient land administration, infrastructure development, and protection of property rights.
The Prime Minister highlighted the practical scale of surveying demands currently facing the nation. Government land ownership programs alone require the annual surveying and demarcation of approximately 50,000 land parcels. She also noted that surveyors have played instrumental roles in major irrigation projects across the Northern and North Central Provinces, with contributions to more than 100 reservoirs. Their work on the Rajarata Canal Project demonstrated particular technical precision in ensuring accurate tunnel alignment and gradient specifications.
Amarasuriya stressed that the profession's relevance is rapidly expanding as emerging technologies transform the sector. Advances in satellite technology, Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing, drone technology, artificial intelligence, and digital mapping present both opportunities and challenges for practitioners. She characterized geospatial information as having become an indispensable national asset essential for urban planning, emergency response, and the delivery of public services.
The Prime Minister connected the surveying profession's work to broader national challenges, particularly climate resilience and disaster preparedness. She referenced recent events including Cyclone Ditwah and flooding incidents as evidence of the consequences arising from inadequate site assessment and weak technical standards. Accurate, integrated land information systems, she argued, are vital components of long-term planning in an era of climate change.
During the event, the institute presented awards recognizing lifetime achievement, national contributions, entrepreneurial efforts, and memorial tributes to deceased professionals. The Prime Minister concluded by encouraging younger practitioners to continuously develop their expertise and pursue interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure the surveying profession remains central to Sri Lanka's development trajectory.
