Research Publications Authored by SLIIT Staff
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This collection includes all SLIIT staff publications presented at external conferences and published in external journals. The materials are organized by faculty to facilitate easy retrieval.
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Publication Embargo Decrypting the Digital Vault by Understanding Cryptocurrency Adoption Challenges Among Gen Z: Case of Sri Lanka(University of Nigeria Department of Mass Communication, 2025-01-01) Mallawaarachchi, S; Hemachandra, U; Jayakody, D; Wickramarathne, U; Lokeshwara, A.A; Bandara, G.CBackground: As digital natives, Gen Zs are at the forefront of embracing cryptocurrencies for technological innovation and financial empowerment. This study is part of a larger effort to understand the evolving trends in the world of cryptocurrency, highlighting the need for more research in this area. Objective: This study sought to explore the diverse challenges faced by Gen Zs while adapting to the usage of cryptocurrencies within the Sri Lankan context. Methodology: The researchers conducted this study using an inductive qualitative approach. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 24 participants, employing snowball sampling to recruit participants. The collected data were then analysed using thematic analysis, and the findings were presented in prose form. Results: The results of this study revealed three key themes that significantly impact the usage of cryptocurrency as a digital asset among Gen Zs in Sri Lanka: (i) Trust and security concerns, (ii) Market volatility and investment risks, (iii) Regulatory approach and cryptocurrency transactions. Conclusion: Although cryptocurrency has gained acceptance among Gen Zs, its usage is determined by factors that ensure that users harness its full benefits. Contribution: This study has revealed the diverse challenges that Gen Zs embraced when adopting cryptocurrencies. © 2025, University of Nigeria Department of Mass Communication. All rights reserved.Publication Open Access Critical risk factors influencing the management of disruptions in construction projects: Insights from recent challenges in Sri Lanka(Elsevier Ltd, 2025-01) Rajapakshe, WThe construction industry has a significantly contribute to the economy of Sri Lanka. However, in recent years, its overall share of the national output has declined, primarily due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, political instability, and ongoing economic challenges. Many construction firms halted projects and laid off employees, highlighting the critical need for effective risk management during crises to predict and mitigate risks. This study explores emerging risk factors in Sri Lanka's construction sector post-crisis. Using a three-phase linear decision-making model, the research combines a literature review, a survey of 290 construction professionals, and structural equation modelling (SEM) to identify major risk factors across four phases of risk management. Key risks out of 23 include general factors like health and safety issues, material costs, regulations, political interference, corruption, and labor shortages, while phase-specific risks involve delays, budget overruns, payment delays, and cancellations. The study revises the risk registers to improve risk management strategies. While the findings are context-specific to Sri Lanka, they may offer indicative insights for other developing countries facing similar crisis-driven disruptions. The practical implications extend to multinational and local companies, supported by data from 22 countries, offering a comprehensive framework for addressing construction industry challenges in volatile environments. The novelty of this study lies in its use of theoretical triangulation to align Classical Risk Management theory with real-world operational risk factors, revealing critical overlaps, behavioral influences, and contextual gaps in traditional frameworks.Publication Embargo Toward minority resilience – an integrated qualitative analysis with trans and gender non-conforming interviewees in Sri Lanka(Emerald Publishing, 2025-04-08) De Silva, R; Henrich, S; de Silva, B.G. R; Maycock, M; Edirisooriya, C; Nagahawatta, K; Medawatta, WPurpose – This study aims to explore minority resilience of trans and gender non-confirming individuals within a non-Western, collectivist society in Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 15 interviews were analyzed with the multi-method qualitative text and discourse analysis framework; by incorporating the depth of discourse analysis with the breadth of thematic analysis. Findings – Four narratives emerged (jealousy and competition; authentic expression; othered or shunned; and conditional acceptance), located at the convergence of the two interview foci, “group membership” and “level of support”. Study findings strengthen the Transgender Resilience Intervention Model with evidence from a non-Western context, highlighting unique findings from Sri Lanka. Research limitations/implications – The sample size, focus on one nationality, exclusion of minors and recruitment of participants with access to digital devices may limit generalizability of study findings. Some responses on autobiographical data required prompting by the researcher, and retrospective recollections may not be reliable. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first studies in South Asia to explore minority resilience with trans and gender non-conforming individuals. The findings add to the growing body of South Asian scholarship and further expand the predominantly Global North literature by providing a collectivist perspective.Publication Open Access Unveiling the challenges: exploring start-up hurdles faced by small and medium-sized enterprise entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka(Springer Nature, 2025-03-30) Gankandage, A; Jayathilaka, RThis study specifically focuses on the factors contributing to start-up failures in the SME sector in Sri Lanka, with particular emphasis on the educational, socio-cultural, economic, and psychological variables that affect entrepreneurial outcomes. The primary objective is to identify and analyse the factors contributing to these failures. Data collection involved interviews, telephone surveys, and online questionnaires. Given that the dependent variable categorises outcomes as either success or failure, a Probit regression model, was deemed the most appropriate analytical method. The findings reveal significant impacts of educational and economic factors on start-up failures in the SME sector. Additionally, psychological, and socio-cultural factors were found to influence these failures. Most participants recommended integrating entrepreneurship and skill development topics into the O/Level and A/Level curricula. Based on these insights, this study proposes several policy recommendations. It suggests that policymakers improve the education system to meet the country’s educational needs more effectively. It also recommends that family members, society, and religious leaders receive education pertaining to start-up development. Furthermore, it advises policymakers and financial institutions to align more closely with entrepreneurial needs to prevent business failures. Lastly, the study emphasises the importance of educating entrepreneurs on maintaining a motivated and positive attitude, addressing the fear of loss, and understanding the psychological aspects of business management. Building upon the brief overview in the abstract, the following introduction lays the foundation for our study, elaborating on the economic concepts and contextual background.Publication Embargo Interactive Mobile Application for Initial Skills Development of Primary Students in Sri Lanka(IEEE, 2022-12-09) Liyanage, C.; Kavinda, U. A. D. S.; Dasanayaka, D. S.; Shehara, P. G. J.; De Silva, D. I.In many cases, children between this age are using smartphones and other technology devices, to play games, watch cartoons, take photos and sometimes the chance is getting higher than we think that children access unnecessary contents due to lack of guidance and unawareness of parents. This interactive mobile application is used as an adaptive learning tool for the primary school students. Utilizing children’s comfort with technology allows for the development of their talents. In math skills development, some attractively designed gamified activities to solve basic math questions are given according to the skill level the child is currently in. The accuracy was much higher in the Convolutional Neural Network approach as it recorded a value of 0.9919. In environmental skills development component, the app will ask child to identify the surroundings according to a flow, starting from the house and towards the garden using object detection and the results were detected with a higher accuracy level around 0.9-0.99 after training the Machine Learning model. And in the language skills development component the child is given activities to develop pronunciation skills using audio processing and finally the verification of online achievements of a child by Non-Fungible Token technology, is fulfilled via the app.Publication Open Access Online Harassment in Sri Lanka: A Thematic Analysis(MDPI, 2023-03-15) Harasgama, K.S; Jayamaha, S: Online harassment has become a growing menace worldwide for which every nation is trying to find a solution. Existing literature demonstrates that online harassment is widespread in diverse forms and so is its impact on the victims. Despite the lack of any comprehensive studies in this area, there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the prevalence of online harassment in Sri Lanka and the need to find effective solutions to it. In such circumstances, this study aims to understand the nature of online harassment in the Sri Lankan context using qualitative research methodology. To that end, the study uses thematic analysis for analysing the data collected through semi-structured interviews. The thematic analysis was employed for the study as it assists in classifying complex qualitative data into different and simplified themes for better understanding and interpretation of such data. Among other findings, the analysis revealed three global themes, namely the motives of the perpetrators, the impact on victims, and remedies. Under each global theme, the study revealed various organising and basic themes, also indicating that the motives of the perpetrators and the impact on the victims are closely connected. It further reveals that impacts could be extremely serious, ranging from helplessness to suicidal thoughts, humiliation to broken relationships, and even having adverse impacts on the careers of victims. The study also found that the available remedies are not systematic or strong enough to meet the expectations of the victims. Thus, we conclude that the threat from online harassment in Sri Lanka is similar to that in any other country, requiring immediate and well-planned legal and policy responses, as exposed by the key themes identified in the study.Publication Open Access Profiling Microplastic Pollution in Surface Water Bodies in the Most Urbanized City of Sri Lanka and Its Suburbs to Understand the Underlying Factors(Springer, Cham, 2023-02-23) Bandara, R. M. L. S.; Perera, M. D. D.; Gomes, Pattiyage I. A.; Yan, Xu-FengThis study investigated the microplastic pollution of surface waters in and around the most populated and urbanized city in Sri Lanka from 2019 to 2022. The sampling regime was designed to cover the rainfall-driven hydrology and varying levels of urbanization approximated by the built area fraction. Mass and particle concentrations of microplastics ranged from undetected to 0.01 g/L (average ± standard deviation: 0.00464 ± 0.00528 g/L) and from 2 to 36 particles/L (5.3 ± 6.9), respectively. The highest microplastic pollution was observed in the lake; however, in many cases it was without a statistically significant (P < 0.05) difference with canals. Concentrations in the dry state (i.e., at least 30 days after no rainfall) were about 1.5 times more than the wet state (i.e., at least 50 mm/day rainfall for 10 days) in the lake and in the semi-urban canal, but again, the differences were not significant; however, in urban canals, the concentrations were similar in both states. Over 80% of the microplastics were fibre and fragments. Mass concentrations of microplastics showed moderately positive (Pearson’s r > 0.6) correlations with the built area fraction of the contributing catchment in both states but was significant (P < 0.1) only in the dry state. In the case of particle concentrations, none showed even a weak correlation. The independence of microplastic content against built area fraction and rainfall, as well as twice the concentrations found in point source inputs against the surface waters, gave the following insights. Microplastic content in our study area was governed mostly by the modified catchment hydrology spearheaded by stormwater drainages (some cases trans-catchment) and diffusion factors such as non-residential population.Publication Embargo Rubber Buddy: A Mobile Application to Empower Rubber Planters of Sri Lanka(IEEE, 2022-12-09) Jayawardena, A; Ganegoda, K; Imbulana, S; Gunapala, G; Kodagoda, N; Jayasinghe, TThis research was conducted to develop a mobile application that provides expert solutions for the common problems faced by rubber planters in Sri Lanka. The application developed consists of four components, namely, identification of pests in immature rubber plantations and rubber nurseries; leaf disease identification; cover crop identification; and weed identification. Images taken using the mobile phone cameras are recognized using machine learning models developed using several convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures such as mobile net version 2 (MobileNet v2), VGG 16, VGG19, and residual networks (ResNet). After the images were recognized, the application will provide expert solutions and management strategies to the rubber planters. As most of the rubber plantations are located in areas with low network coverage, the application was designed to be operated in offline mode using TensorFlow lite technology.Publication Embargo Comparison of ARIMA and LSTM in Forecasting the Retail Prices of Vegetables in Colombo, Sri Lanka(IEEE, 2022-12-09) Fonseka, D.D; Karunasena, AIdentification of vegetable price trends is important to make better decisions in the production and market. Due to several factors, including seasonality, perishability, an imbalanced supply-demand market, customer choice, and the availability of raw materials, vegetable prices fluctuate quickly and are highly unstable. In this study price prediction was concluded using two models ARIMA and LSTM with retail price data for Cabbage, Carrot, and Green beans in Colombo from 2009 to 2018. According to the decision criteria of RMSE and MAPE, the LSTM model is superior to the ARIMA model in predicting the retail prices of vegetables. There were no studies have focused on predicting prices with novel technology in the Sri Lankan vegetable market. Hence the results of this study can be used to build an advanced forecasting model by the government and decision-makers in agriculture in Sri Lanka.Publication Embargo System to Improve the Quality of Water Resources in Sri Lanka Using Machine Learning and Image Processing(IEEE, 2022-12-09) Liyanage, M. H. S; Gajanayake, G.M.B. S; Wijewickrama, O; Fernando A, S.D.S. A; Wijendra, D; Gamage, A. IWater covers approximately 71% of the earth’s surface, but only 1.2% of it can be used for drinking. However, due to the amount of waste water released into water resources, the presence of harmful microorganisms, and natural occurrences such as eutrophication, even that water cannot be used directly for drinking purposes without purification. One method of purifying water is chlorination. However, if the chlorine level exceeds the standard, it can cause both long-term and short-term illnesses. As a result, a system is imposed to solve four problems: predicting the pH value of chlorinated drinking water, determining the quantification value of active sludge in a wastewater plant, detecting microorganisms in drinking water, and predicting the percentage of eutrophication in a water resource.