Flood hazards in the headwaters area: lessons learned from a survey of households in the upper Myjava basin, Slovakia

The aims of this paper are to present knowledge about the threat of flooding in the upper basins of the Myjava River, obtained using a questionnaire, and to identify the potential lessons for flood risk management. The questionnaire was designed to obtain information about households' experience with flooding, including the type of floods experienced, the locations of flooding, the exacerbating factors contributing to flood risk that they considered to be important and their proposals to minimise the occurrence of flooding. Findings obtained using the questionnaire suggest that: (i) in the upper basins, sheetwash flooding is as important as river flooding and the assessment of flood hazards should include all significant types of flood hazard; (ii) flood risk management in the upper basins should primarily focus on the systematic maintenance of small watercourses and on eliminating local factors that increase the risk of all types of flooding. The building of structures for flood defence should be seen as a last resort when other options are not effective.