History

With regard to the Geographical Names, a Gazetteer has been prepared in the office of Geography, Department of Interior, Washington D.C in June 1960 containing official standard approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names, as well as unapproved variant names. This Gazetteer contains about 29,600 entries for places and features in the country based on 1 inch topographic map series prepared and completed in 1924 by the Survey Department of Sri Lanka being the National Mapping Organization. This map series contain all the geographical names that are in practical use at the time of preparation of the map series in respect of place/village names, natural and man made topographical features, administrative areas etc.

After getting freedom to the country in 04th February 1948, Survey Department was headed by Sri Lankan Surveyor Generals instead of British officials.

After Sri Lanka converted itself into the metric system of measurements in 1982, a new topographic map series was prepared on the scale of 1: 50,000, and there are 92 maps in this series to cover the entire country. During the period 1980 – 1997, the department had produced this Topographical map series by combining one inch maps and aerial photographs, and parellal to the 1: 50,000 production, department had engaged in producing 1:10,000 map series using photogrammetric methods and high resolution satellite images. The topographic data in those map series are also available in digital vector form as a topographic vector database for GIS applications and Digital Mapping.

In early 90’s, the department aims to understand and change processes and dynamics to achieve better functioning of the organization due to the developments taken place in the external environment. As a result of this, the department introduced divisional survey office system and all surveyors attached to the office. It leads to increase specializations of functions, people and infrastructure. The one and only training school under the SLSD, namely Institute of Surveying & Mapping situated at Diyatalawa (about 200 km away from Colombo), was upgraded as a degree awarding institute under a UNDP project during this period. (for more information about ISM can be seen clicking “Training Institute”)

At the same time with the changes of the new technologies in Surveying & Mapping fields around the world and user demands for different type spatial information were increased. As a result, the department had introduced Geodetic type Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers in 1999 to determine the co-ordinate values of the ground control points. Since the accuracy of the Geodetic network established in early 1900’s was inadequate to meet the new demands, new geodetic net work for the entire country was established in 1999 to work with Global Positioning Systems. According to the adjustment, statistical accuracy of the new network was around 1: 750,000 which is suitable for ongoing mapping and cadastral survey procedures.

Moreover, the SLSD owned a GPS permanent reference point linked with the world net namely DORIS point, which was established in 1993. It was not functioning some time and however, recently it was re-established and being updated with the foreign aids.

With the assistance of the foreign funded project (SRIIM-2007-2009) SLSD was able to update the topographic database for the southern part of the country as well as create the spatial data layers for the Eastern coastal belt. A high resolution satellite data used for updation and new spatial data creation too. Recently, the colour photography of the Northern Province were completed under the JICA project of “Digital topographic Mapping project of Northern Region”.

Up to 2003, all land information and plans were prepared in the hardcopies only. The department introduced digital Land Information System (LIS) in 2003 and accelerated from 2009. Up to now, the LIS is having information around 1100,000 land parcels and it is published in the website under the "GEO Sri Lanka" web services for the public

In 2015 under the assistence of the JICA the department is introduced the Lidar technology and lidar data avaliable in Western, Sabaragamuwa & Central provinces.

The Survey Department is being strategically re-organizing its system architecture in order to facilitate the customer needs and fulfil the national requirments.