Land-Use and Legislation-Based Methodology for the Implementation of Sustainable Drainage Systems in the Semi-Arid Region of Brazil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is very well-written. The study is quite relevant and the findings are timely. Congratulations to the authors.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted paper entitled »Land-use and legislation-based methodology for the implementation of Sustainable Drainage Systems in the semi-arid region of Brazil« presents the results of modeling the influence of various SuDS implemented in Campina Grande, city in semi-arid region of Brazil. The introduction sufficiently provides the background and the additional chapter on situation in Brazil gives an interesting insight to the importance of this topic. The methodology section includes all the necessary data and understandably presents the background of the model. The presentation of the results is based on the runoff water reduction which could be upgraded with additional analyses. However, results are clearly presented and the figures offers the necessary support. The discussion should be supplemented with a few comparisons with other results from previous studies.

Comments

L233: The authors emphasize that the study takes place in semi-arid (dry) area. It would be useful to present more data on this climate type and explain how the model (and used data) differs from others of different climate types.

Table 5: SCENARIOS should be again explained just before the table (L288-L289) or marked differently. It took me quite some time to connect them with scenarios described in L259-L261.

L312: Renumber (i) to section 4.1 and (ii) to section 4.2

L355: Is it possible to mark the additional 7 points with different color?

L366: The reference on table 6 is not logical here.

L374: How is this possible, putting green roofs on free spaces (spaces with no use)? As I understand free space is space without buildings. Is it true? Maybe explain it somewhere in the manuscript … However, if there are no buildings also no green roofs can be implemented there. Explain.

L378: Here you state that the measure was implemented only on 12 blocks, but on figure the influence of the measure is evident for all of the blocks. This is explained later in the manuscript but at this point it is confusing for the reader. I suggest to add a table on number of blocks where each measure was implemented. Additionally, explain its influence on other blocks at the beginning of this section.

L382: You state that also block 28 has high reduction but according to the figure 5 reduction on block 14 is higher but is not mentioned. On block 14 reduction is 79% and on block 28 only 38%. Please check.

L399: Similarly; reduction for block 20 is 63.49% but it is higher for block 8 (cca 74%) – please check.

L403-404: This sentence is hard to understand. “Block 21, in scenario 1, had flow equal to 0 (best situation) if GR was implemented in its area (approximately 42.5 %).” What is “its area”, the free area? And approximately 42.5% of what? Area? Reduction of runoff?

Figure 7: Rename the x axis, it doesn’t represent the blocks.

L453-455 and Figure 8: delete the trendline for SuDS area, it doesn’t give any information. What is the meaning of the other two trendlines? Their R² should be very small … The imperviousness and the location, connection to which are supposed to be described with the trendlines are not on the figure. Are they? How can than this connection be expressed?

Discussion: Compare your results to other studies. Recently there have been so many papers published on this topic (also in Sustainability), also comparing various SuDS, their location, implementation, areas … Are there any differences for results in different climate zones (see comment 1)? Please add a short discussion on that, citing some other research studies.

L486: Figures 3a,b gives results of Scenario 1 and Figure 9 of scenario 2. Is the described comparison ok than?

Table 6: Add a discussion; which scenario gave the best result in other studies?

L505: “… and pollution control.” Add reference.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript addresses the interesting topic of the efficiency of SuDS on mixed land-use catchments in the semi-arid region of Brazil. This work would be of interest to those seeking to understand how to link water resources modelling and urban planning, with land-use and legislation barriers. The authors developed a land-use and legislation-based methodology to identify possible strategies for a strategic planning tool with the integration of different structures. Overall, they did a good job in evaluating the suitable SuDS options. I don't have major concerns, but please see my minor comments below:

 

1. Line 159: "evolves" to "evolve".

2. Line 168-169: can you explain a bit more about the reason choosing this specific city for study?

3. Figure 1: can you provide lat/lon information on figure axis?

4. Line 219-220: any citations supporting this statement?

5. Line 256: "which is".

6. Line 303: "unavailable".

7. Line 304: please explain more about how the input data was chosen (since calibration was claimed not possible).

8. Most figures seem to be directly created from Excel. This is fine but the colors, fonts, and lines need to be improved for better visualization. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have taken into account all of the comments and have nicely updated the manuscript. I suggest paper to be published.