Abstract
Floods are among the most widespread and devastating natural hazards in Serbia, causing significant human, material, and environmental losses and slowing long-term local and national development. The consequences of floods do not arise only from the characteristics of the natural event, but are largely directly or indirectly conditioned by the human factor, i.e., the way of using space, the degree of urbanization, planning, the quality of infrastructure, and institutional readiness to manage risk before, during, and after the event. Based on modern approaches to disaster risk management, the paper focuses on resilience, reflected in the local community’s ability to preserve key functions, reduce losses, adapt to changing conditions, and ensure rapid and sustainable recovery. However, the experiences after the major floods of 2014, as well as numerous studies, have shown systemic weaknesses and brought to light that existing solutions are often not sufficiently coordinated. In addition, it is evident that local capacities are uneven and that preventive measures remain insufficiently developed in relation to the needs of risk-exposed areas. Precisely for this reason, strengthening local governments and developing resilient communities are recognized as strategic priorities, as risks are most quickly identified, resources are organized, and measures that directly affect citizens’ safety are implemented at the local level. Based on this, the paper specifically emphasizes that local governments have a dual role: as the bearer of planning and regulation (spatial planning, urban measures, risk assessment) and as the coordinator of operational activities (preparation, alerting, evacuation, care, and recovery). The paper aims to offer a practically usable framework for strengthening local communities’ resilience to floods by conceptualizing and analyzing relevant normative and institutional frameworks. Special attention is paid to the integration of investment (infrastructural) and non-investment measures (organizational, educational, planning, and communication), as well as to their coordination across different levels of governance, with clear division of responsibilities and cooperation mechanisms. The focus is also on harmonizing local policies with modern legislative and strategic solutions of the Republic of Serbia, including the Law on Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Management (2018), which encourages more systematic risk management and strengthening prevention. The paper shows that flood risk management cannot be based solely on the traditional “flood defense” model. Still, it requires a shift towards an adaptation approach and the concept of “living with floods”, which implies continuous reductions in vulnerability and improvements in capacity. In this context, in addition to classic protection measures, the systematic strengthening of community resources and capacities — natural, economic, infrastructural, human, social, and institutional — is crucial, because it is precisely their quality that determines how ready a community will be to prevent damage, respond to an event, and recover without long-term disruption. Additionally, the paper highlights the importance of partnerships between local governments and public enterprises, the civil sector, and business, to pool resources and implement measures more quickly and efficiently.
Conclusions
Undoubtedly, natural hazards are among the greatest threats facing humanity in the twenty-first cen-tury. Owing to their characteristics, such as sudden onset and intensity, they continuously pose a threat not only to human life and health, but also to critical infrastructure and the environment. The region of South-eastern Europe, due to its geographical position and climatic characteristics, is known to be highly suscep-tible to natural hazards. At the same time, the Republic of Serbia, in particular, has long been marked by floods. This phenomenon has always accompanied it and continues to pose a major threat to protected val-ues.
Although floods have long been an integral part of human life and were even explained as an “act of God,” in recent decades, their frequency, intensity, and speed of onset have changed significantly, and we are witnessing increasingly frequent and destructive flood events with clearly identifiable causes. One of those causes is certainly ongoing climate change, the rapid intensification of which is driven by human ac-tivity and harmful impacts on nature. This results in ozone depletion, an increase in average annual tem-peratures, the destruction of biodiversity, an increase in precipitation, and similar processes, all of which together create favorable conditions for floods.
Efforts to align legal and strategic documentation with the recommendations and regulations of inter-national organizations in the field of disaster risk reduction and emergency management, together with the timely and adequate implementation of preventive activities such as hazard-source mapping, monitoring, and risk assessment, respect for urban planning regulations and land management to avoid constructing houses and other facilities in flood-prone areas, as well as the provision of financial resources for maintain-ing protection systems, are essential measures for ensuring the proper functioning of the risk reduction sys-tem and strengthening resilience at the local, national, and regional levels.
After the 2014 floods, which caused catastrophic consequences and revealed numerous shortcomings and weaknesses in the risk reduction system, the key role of local self-government in risk management was recognized. Accordingly, local self-government has a primary role in undertaking both preventive and reac-tive measures in addressing flood risk within the territory of the local self-government unit. In the context of risk reduction, local self-government is obliged to adopt a risk assessment, designate flood-prone zones within its territory, implement flood defense plans, establish civil protection units, and organize fire and rescue units in order to ensure a more effective response in the event of floods and to reduce and eliminate their consequences.
In addition to specific normative and planning measures aimed at building resilience at the local level, an unavoidable new concept of resilience assessment is the capital-based approach—natural, physical, economic, human, and social and institutional capital—through which capacities for response to and re-covery from floods are strengthened at both the local and national levels. Based on measuring the resilience capital index, that is, by analyzing each form of capital and its indicators, it is possible to determine the de-gree of resilience of a particular local self-government unit, while also identifying the need to improve cer-tain capacities and resources in order to provide more adequate protection and response in the event of nat-ural disasters.
Within the context of capital, in addition to infrastructure improvement, afforestation, and economic stability, the importance of human and social capital in disaster risk reduction has also been recognized. The main means of combating disasters lies in building the resilience of people, that is, members of the community, and equipping them to understand risk, undertake proactive measures, respond promptly, and adapt to the consequences. None of this can be achieved without non-formal educational programs that teach the local population how to act before, during, and after a disaster. This form of education not only benefits each individual but also strengthens the cohesion of a local community to confront change collec-tively and, in that way, supports competent services in eliminating consequences and restoring normal life.
How to cite
Lazić, S., Gačić, J., & Cvetković, V. (2026). Operationalizing the Resilience of Local Communities to Flood Risk: A Capital Approach and Assessment Model. Fourth Memorial Scientific and Professional Conference – Modern Integrated Disaster Risk Management, Belgrade. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19339128
