Ľubomír Solín

This paper examines whether local authorities in Slovakia are prepared to manage flood risk in line with resilience principles. The research framework focuses on three dimensions of resilience in local flood risk management: knowledge, policies and actions, and governance. Data were collected through a web-based questionnaire distributed to mayors of Slovak municipalities with previous flood experience. The analysis is based on 499 completed questionnaires. The findings reveal that current local-level flood risk management is inadequate from a resilience perspective. The main shortcomings are the lack of diversified management strategies and highly centralized governance. Three key challenges for enhancing resilience were identified: i) modifying the approach to preliminary flood risk assessments to identify areas of potentially significant flood risk, ii) implementing diversified flood risk management strategies at the river basin scale, and iii) decentralizing flood risk governance. The results highlight the main barriers and challenges that need to be addressed to strengthen resilience in local flood risk management.

Slovenská akadémia vied vykonáva špičkový základný výskum, dlhodobý strategický a aplikovaný výskum a vývoj a poskytuje prístup k vedeckej infraštruktúre.

This study presents a methodological approach for the mapping of the flood hazard potential of small watercourses, based on their hydromorphological attributes, on the example of a mountain river basin in Slovakia. The flood hazard of a watercourse is understood more comprehensively, providing a set of influencing variables and their attributes that affect the flood hazard. The proposed procedure consists of several steps ranging from the selection of stream variables influencing the flood hazard potential to the evaluation of the attributes of the variables in terms of their impacts on the flood hazard and the determination of a flood hazard index. The mapping divides the watercourse into reaches that differ by their level of flood hazard potential. This enables us to identify those river reaches that are critical in terms of flood hazard and that require management interventions. The results are interpreted in the context of cadastral areas through which the watercourses flow, which is particularly important for local authorities.

In the context of flood risk management, the application of spatial planning is challenging. This article specifies the position of spatial planning in the context of flood risk management in Slovakia. Through a case study, it assesses the potential of municipal spatial plans to reduce flood risk in rural landscapes. The analysis of municipal spatial plans includes the following aspects: the legislative framework, the actionability of spatial plans and the competences of municipalities. The results showed that in terms of key aspects of flood risk management in the rural landscape, i.e. reducing flood risk through the application of eco-stabilisation measures and reducing the negative consequences of floods through the functional and spatial arrangement of the rural landscape, spatial plans have the status of a formal document. There are several reasons for this. The first one is centralised governance of flood risk. The second reason is the flood risk policy where protection by the technical infrastructure is dominant. The third reason is inconsistent use of municipal powers to reduce flood risk based on a spatial plan. The expectation that the municipalities’ spatial plans could contribute to effective flood risk management in the rural landscape thus remains a challenge.

The aim of this study is to present a methodological approach for the mapping of the flood hazard potential of small watercourses, based on their hydromorphogical attributes on the example of a mountain river basin in Slovakia. The flood hazard of a watercourse is understood more comprehensively and includes a set of watercourse attributes that are pressure indicators that affect the flood hazard. The proposed procedure consists of several steps: from the selection of watercourse variables influencing flood hazard potential through to the evaluation of the attributes of the variables in terms of their impact on flood hazards and the determination of the flood hazard index. The mapping divides the watercourse into reaches that differ by their level of flood hazard potential. This enables to identify those river reaches that are critical in terms of flood hazard and where management interventions are needed. The interpretation of the achieved results on the flood hazard of river reaches is carried out in the context of cadastral areas through which watercourses flow. It is considered to be particularly important and beneficial for local authorities.

The aim of this case study is to present a methodological approach for the flood hazard assessment of small watercourses, based on the evaluation of the impact of the morphology of the watercourse channel, land cover of the floodplain, transport infrastructures along the watercourse, bank and channel vegetation, negative attributes of vegetation, and debris in the channel. Each variable is represented by a set of attributes that characterise the current state of the watercourse reach. The assessment process begins with the division of watercourses into river reaches based on a mutual combination of variables influencing the flood hazard. Subsequently, the current state of the variable attributes of each river reach is identified and their impact on flood hazards is then assessed according to rational rules. The impact of the individual attributes is first expressed on an ordinal scale, which is then transformed into a quantitative weight. The overall Flood Hazard Index (FHI) of the river reach is then determined through the aggregation of the quantitative weights of the impact of individual attributes. Key words: Flood hazard index, watercourse attributes, municipality, riverine landscape, river reach

The paper presents a methodological approach to preliminary flood risk assessment, which is conceptually based on the regional typing and integrated flood risk assessment. From the above conceptual bases, two key tasks arise: (1) establishing a basic spatial unit for preliminary flood risk assessment and (2) specifying its attributes in relation to the flood hazard and vulnerability (negative consequences), which correspond to assessment on a national scale. The basic spatial unit is defined as the municipality district. The methodological procedure of the preliminary flood risk assessment is based on an assessment of the impact of the district’s attributes on the potential of the flood hazard and negative flood consequences in the form of indicators, which are aggregated to subindices and indices. The flood risk potential index is determined as an aggregation of the flood hazard potential index and flood consequences potential index.