Extreme flood events as a neglected natural hazard for marginalized Roma communities of Slovakia

The study is based on an analysis of remote sensing and hydrological data, a digital terrain model, and the Atlas of Roma Communities (ARC), setting out to address the highly pressing research challenge of marginalized Roma communities (MRCs) located in flood-prone areas. With the incentive to reduce flood exposure, the research pursued four key objectives: the creation of a geodatabase of Slovak MRCs, a morphometric assessment of MRCs, a flood hazard index calculation for individual MRCs, and flood management recommendations for the most threatened communities. In terms of topographic analysis and landform classification, elevation percentile and elevation amplitude were employed, while the distance of an MRC from the nearest watercourse, the occurrence of floods in the municipality, and the barriers between an MRC and the nearest watercourse were used to estimate the flood hazard index.

The findings demonstrate that out of the 576 MRCs analyzed, 60.13% were situated in the first quartile of the elevation percentile, highlighting their disproportionate concentration in low-lying and flood-susceptible terrain. Furthermore, the Topľa, Hornád 1, Torysa, and Ondava 1 river basins emerged as the regions with the highest number of most exposed MRCs, sorted by descending amount of communities facing very high flood hazard. These results collectively underscore the urgent need for targeted flood management interventions at the intersection of geographic vulnerability and social marginalization, calling for immediate attention to the most threatened Roma communities across Slovakia.