The talk mainly focuses on the development of seismic hazard maps for Sri Lanka based on different return period events. As Sri Lanka is located in the North Western region of the Indo-Australian plate, where the interplate seismic activities around this plate is mainly governed by Himalayas to the north and by Sunda trench to the east, Sri Lanka is considered to be safe against earthquakes. However, it is identified that the intraplate activities recorded in the past spanning northwest to southwest coast of Sri Lanka in the vicinity of failed Mannar rift zone and the Comorin ridge could be the seismic threat to Sri Lanka.

Therefore, to assess this risk, seismic hazard analysis was performed using standard PSHA procedure after the compiling of a composite earthquake catalogue for area bounded by latitudes 00N to 200N and longitudes 700E to 900E based on historical and instrumental earthquake data from 1063 to 2012. Based on these results, Sri Lanka seismic hazard maps for PGA for 50 year, 475 year and 2475 year return period earthquakes were prepared. Also, 5% elastic damping response spectrum was proposed for rocky or hard soil sites based on the results obtained.

During the talk, I also intend to highlight how this individual research done based on your person interest may lead to collaborative research in multi-disciplinary nature.