Development of a Modelling Approach as a Tool for Effective Decision Making in the Drainage/sewerage Management of the Vavuniya Town

Abstract

Almost all the urbanized areas in Sri Lanka are observed to have critical environmental problems associated with the lack of management of drainage and sewerage systems. The Vavuniya Town is no exception and, at present it critically suffers from the lack of a comprehensive liquid waste management strategy. As the need to upgrade the present drainage/wastewater management systems is realized, the necessity for investigations on how the present systems can be improved also arises. One possible strategy could be the employment of simulation modelling techniques to evaluate possible management scenarios to arrive at the best set of practices for effective environmental management. This paper provides an insight to how a simulation model can/should be developed to understand the problem of concern in-depth and, how different management strategies can be evaluated so as to aid in decisionmaking.