Sri Lanka with a population density of 316/km2 has a rural roads network exceeding 65,000km and more than 70 % of its population still live in rural areas. Even though this implies an overall road density of around 1.5km/sqkm its spatial variability is not uniform, so causing maximum recorded individual walked distances even ranging from 32km to 52km in search of access for basic services. Like other developing nations lack of sufficient funds, human capacity / capability restrictions, weak management cultures and scare recourses and corruption have brought the status of rural road network from bad to worst, severely affecting the socioeconomic status of rural communities directly and in general of the whole country. Local authorities have so far been unable to develop or to formulate effective, yet sustainable mechanisms to facilitate decision making in order to prioritize road development investments. Non availability of technically sound and logical mechanisms have made way for political hierarchies to adopt ad-hoc decisions, eventually leading to waste and corruptions. Making the situation worst the local road network has not yet classified. In the first place a sustainable rural road classification system was developed for a selected local authority, and based on this classification, a data-based approachusing available system tools was developed to facilitate investment decisions. Even though systems developed within geographical information systemenvironments have comparative advantages such systems did not produce sustainable tools, hence a matrix based approach was introduced as an alternative. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract