A Method for the Definition of Local Vulnerability Domains to Climate Change and Relate Mapping. Two Case Studies in Southern Italy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Major revisions are needed to make the paper suitable for publication in the Journal Sustainability. Please find below observations and comments. In addition, a marked manuscript is attached with comments on a pdf text.
GENERAL ISSUES
In the Introduction the Authors wrote "climate change tends to accelerate geodisasters". However, the earthquake - a natural phenomenon that becomes a geo-disaster if lead to human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts- is not related to climate change. The term geo-disaster has a very broad meaning, i.e. "disasters triggered by geological and geophysical phenomena on the earth". The climate change phenomenon encompass changes of the average climatic conditions and climate variability and changes of the magnitude and frequency of extreme events. The result is an increase of weather-related disasters. Climate change will therefore affect disaster risks in two ways, firstly through the likely increase in weather and climate hazards, and secondly through increases in the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards, particularly through ecosystem degradation, reductions in water and food availability, and changes to livelihoods. Climate change will add yet another stress to those of environmental degradation and rapid unplanned urban growth, further reducing communities’ abilities to cope with even the existing levels of weather hazards (UNISDR, Geneva, September 2008). In light of this, it is better the sentence “climate change is contributing to raising disaster risk”. I recommend deleting the term geo-disaster from the manuscript.
The proposed manuscript is aimed at providing a method for the definition of local vulnerability domains to climate change and the related mapping, but in the Introduction no literature concerning vulnerability (local vulnerability) is discuss. There is a need of a literature review dedicated to this topic reflecting both national (Italian) and international aspects. The paragraph from lines 269 to 274 should be moved here.
Section 2 (Related works) is too long and focuses on non-essential information. The authors should report only results of SRL useful for their methodology.
In Section 3 (Methods) some references must be added. From lines 283-286, the Authors wrote "In particular, for the choice of indicators, the authors reworked and referred to the themes proposed by different literature studies and sector documents [102-104]. In particular, the studies by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices and by the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research were the reference for the choice of indicators characterizing the climate exposure component…....." Subsequently (line 297), the Authors wrote "For the construction of the local climatic profile, the methodology refers to indicators attributable to temperature and precipitation values, in accordance with what was inferred from the first research question of the SLR (subsection 2.1)". It is not clear, in the text, which is the role of the SLR process.
In the Section 4 (Results) the Authors wrote “The period 2010-2019 was chosen as the reference climatological period.” This short period limits investigations of local climate profile that require long time-series of data (at least 30 years) and requires reliable data sets. Explain why the period 2010-2019 was analized. The Authors explain how many measurement stations they analyzed and if they evaluated the reliability of the data (absence of outliers and homogeneity of the series). At the end of the subsection 4.2, the Authors wrote that the actions reported in Table 7 have been proposed at a theoretical and regulatory level for the planning of some Italian regions and these could be shared in the present study. Usually, "what could be done in the future" is part of the conclusions. Moreover, it is not clear on the basis of which results -obtained from the application of the methodology - the systematic framework was built.
Finally, since no a detailed comparative analysis was made between the vulnarability levels of the two case studies (urban and rural areas) I recommend deleting "A comparative analysis in urban and rural areas in Italy" from the title
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The quality of the research work presented in the paper is excellent. I have the following comments:
1. The quality of figures 1,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 is not good and they are not unreadable.
2. The abbreviations and symbols in equation (3) should be explained.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Please see my detailed comments in the attached file. Some parts of the literature review are not necessary. Also, one part of results is not linked to the case studies.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I have revised the new version af manuscript. I think the text has been improved and therefore the paper can be accepted for publication.
