Geografie 2026, 131, 199-221
The resilience of society to flood risk as a challenge for local government: A case study from Slovakia
, Ľubomír Solín2, Ján Výbošťok1,2
1Comenius University, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Regional Geography and Regional Development, Bratislava, Slovakia
2Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography, Bratislava, Slovakia
Received October 2025
Accepted June 2026
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.
Keywords
flood risk management, legislative framework, local government competence, social resilience, Slovakia.
Funding
This paper was prepared within project APVV-22-0428 “Marginalised Roma concentrations in the context of natural hazards and social inequality”, which is financially supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV). It was also supported by the Scientific Agency of The Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic under grant VEGA 1/0531/26.
