Smart village concept for rural area development in Sri Lanka: a study on implementation, benefits, and challenges

Abstract

The Smart Village (SV) concept can be mentioned as a potential enabler for rural area development by integrating smart technologies. Many developed countries adopted the Smart Village concept to develop their countryside for example “Digital Village” in Germany, the “Cowocat rural” project in Catalonia, etc. This has brought a key advantage called improved quality of rural life and public services. But in the Sri Lankan context, the evidence of the successful implementation of Smart Village for the development of rural areas is almost nil in parallel there is no significant development seen in rural areas. Thus, the study aimed to investigate the implementation, benefits, and challenges of using the Smart Village concept for rural area development in Sri Lanka. The mixed research approach was undertaken to accomplish the aim. A comprehensive literature review followed by semi-structured interviews was carried out with 07 experts knowledgeable in the Smart Village concept. The data were analyzed through the RII method and the manual content analysis. The results demonstrate, that the most implemented Smart Village feature in Sri Lanka is smart education, however, the most required Smart Village features are listed as smart connectivity and smart agriculture. Further, the technologies like ICT, AI, IoT, GIS, 5G, and smart grid can be adapted to raise the Smart Village concept covering agriculture, education, transportation, health, and infrastructure was presented. However, lack of network cooperation, difficulties in raising funds, and transitioning to low-carbon economies, were found to be the top key challenges in implementing Smart Village in Sri Lanka