The study was conceptualized to distinguish contribution of urban home gardening towards household food security and quality of life while making greener environment in urban area in the context of country wise curfew during COVID-19 pandemic and challenges arisen with it. Kandy municipal area was selected as study site and questionnaire surveys over prepared grid map and field observations were the principal data collection methods used in this study. Social and physical inputs for gardening as well as material and immaterial outcomes received through the gardening were considered as major parameters in data collection. It is notable that data collected concerning situation before and during the curfew period. Data feeding and analysis were supported through IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software. Social well-being and mental health was highlighted in all three satisfaction levels of high, moderate, and low and is more than that of 50% from the total recorded responses. Stress release, collective work, family harmonization, exercise, sharing and social cohesion, knowledge and experience, and healthy foods are the outcomes received in the aspect of social well-being and mental health. As they perceive, environmental quality has amended with the outcomes through greening, aesthetic beauty, land management and erosion control, waste management and clean environment. Also, urban dwellers have assured their economic status during the pandemic situation at least fulfilling one or two diets with homemade vegetable products. Still, social well-being and mental health could be prioritized among the benefits received through home gardening; especially during the pandemic situation. Because, awareness and promotion to achieve desired harvest in the urban home gardening is challengeable in the current context. Thus, those aspects should be address in the agricultural policy preparation without compromising livelihood of large scale farmers. So the crop specification for healthy diet can promote by con

Applications of geospatial techniques plays an important role in disaster management and mitigation. This study focuses to analyze how can geospatial technology could have been utilized to minimize the destruction created by the Ammonium Nitrate detonation in Beirut city. Firstly, the disaster impacts on the build-up area were demarcated using Google Earth-based survey, Remote Sensing, and ArcGIS applications. According to the analysis, it was identified that the Ammonium Nitrate detonation incident in the Beirut port has extensively damaged the built-up area within a 2 km buffer zone from the explosion. Among them, fully demolished constructions are bounded to a 1 km buffer area while partially damage and less damage to buildings were encompassed within 5 km from the epicenter of the incident. The Quantity Distance Mapping Tool results depicted more as similar results to the results obtained through the aforementioned geospatial techniques in post-disaster impact analysis. Therefore, proper planning to locate built-up areas considering vulnerable places away from the possible disaster-induced location utilizing spatial techniques like Quantity Distance Mapping Tool would be more effective in pre-disaster preparedness as we all live in a hidden catastrophic environment. Thus, lessons learned from this Ammonium Nitrate detonation incident of the Beirut city, especially the importance of risk assessment and adherence to precaution measures are needed in any chemical operation sites as well as chemical storing sites.

Landslide is one of the common natural disasters experience in central highlands in Sri Lanka. Even though landslide risk predominates in the central highlands, urbanization has been increasing within last three to four decades in this region. This study has focused to classify landslide hazard in the Hantana mountain and its vicinity in the Kandy district which is belong to the central highlands. Initially a base map of the study area was prepared using 1:10,000 topographic sheets of the survey department of Sri Lanka. According to the criteria of landslide hazard and risk classification introduced by the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) - Sri Lanka, bedrock geology, surface deposits, slope, hydrology and drainage, land use and landform are the main six factors influenced to create landslides. Also based on the influence of creating landslide, this criterion has introduced different weightages and ranks for each factor and conditions within each factor respectively. These weightages and ranks are considered to create weighted thematic layers for six factors mentioned in the above using hard copy maps, digital maps, and aerial photographs. Thereafter, the landslide hazard map for the study area has created using ArcGIS software with the help of Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method and overlay analysis technique. Finally, landslide hazard map has created and classified into five landslide hazardous zones i.e. very high, high, moderate, low, and very low and are distributed about 4%, 11%, 31%, 33% and 21% of the total extension of the study area respectively.