Using Existing Indicators to Bridge the Exposure Data Gap: A Novel Natural Hazard Assessment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript "Using Existing Indicators to Bridge the Exposure Data Gap: A Novel Natural Hazard Assessment." The topic is timely and significant, addressing critical issues in climate resilience and natural hazard assessment. The manuscript is well-structured, the language is appropriate, and the content aligns well with the journal's focus. However, there are areas where improvements can be made to enhance the quality of the paper, particularly in the presentation of illustrations and text.

Here are my comments and suggestions:

1.      All figures, charts, and maps should be redrawn to make them more visually attractive and more transparent.

2.      To improve the illustrations' readability, use appropriate legend sizes and better color combinations. Also, add all the required map components.

3.      Ensure that all charts and figures are self-explanatory, allowing readers to understand the data without further elaboration quickly.

 

4.      There are several instances of repetition in the text, which should be streamlined for better clarity and flow

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for taking the time to review my manuscript. Your comments on the structure and content of the manuscript are both helpful and encouraging. I have addressed each comment and suggestion below.

Comments and Suggestions:

1. All figures, charts, and maps should be redrawn to make them more visually attractive and more transparent.

Response: I have resized and redrawn the maps in ArcGIS to make them more transparent and visually appealing. I also recolored the bar chart (Fig.1) and the box and whisker plot to make them more visually attractive and intuitive.

2. To improve the illustrations' readability, use appropriate legend sizes and better color combinations. Also, add all the required map components.

Response: The map figures in this manuscript were redrawn and downloaded at a higher resolution to improve their readability. The legends on each map figure were revised with larger text to improve readability. The color scale for each map was slightly altered to increase the contrast between hazard exposure ratings. A scale bar was added to each map figure to provide spatial context. As North America is an easily recognizable region, North Arrows were deemed unnecessary.

3. Ensure that all charts and figures are self-explanatory, allowing readers to understand the data without further elaboration quickly.

Response: The bar chart (Fig.1) was resized and recolored to accommodate people with color vision deficiency. The box and whisker plot was recolored to improve discernability by contrasting NRI series calculations with the New composite value series using more distinct colors.

4. There are several instances of repetition in the text, which should be streamlined for better clarity and flow

Response: The content of this manuscript has been reviewed for grammar and clarity. Multiple changes were made throughout the text. These edits include changes to the introduction, discussion, and conclusion to improve clarity and reduce redundancy. Methods and results were also edited to improve readability and grammar.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript addresses the main research question of how to simplify the determination of exposure values to natural hazards based on publicly available data provided by the National Risk Index (NRI), it can be seen that the research hypothesis is not clearly presented. This is an original and very relevant topic since it allows the use of public and broad-based information such as that provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to obtain a better understanding of the levels of exposure to different natural hazards, based on the calculation of a new index, the new composite value (NCV), which relates the annualized frequencies and the values of the impacted area, achieving a new metric that is easy to calculate, which together with the normalization of the main factors results in a general exposure risk value, which demonstrates the combined exposure to the hazard for the nine natural hazards studied.
These results constitute a new contribution to the studies of Disaster Risk Management since it simplifies the process of determining the hazard scenarios of different phenomena that potentially cause disasters, when climate change has been increasing and/or disrupting the intensity/frequency of said natural phenomena.
The methodology used is adequate and without many complications it manages to use and transform publicly available information into new knowledge about the levels of exposure of the territories to the various natural phenomena. However, it would have been interesting to see to what extent the results could be grouped and discussed according to the types of hazards based on their occurrence characteristics: temporary (rain, frost, drought, etc.) or sudden onset (volcanic activity, earthquakes, etc.), since the way of predicting, monitoring, and dealing with them can be very different.

In general, the discussion of the results and the conclusions are appropriate and correspond to the research question and the objectives of the work. The references are abundant, pertinent, and up-to-date, and in general the tables and figures are justified and allow the main results to be visualized. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you for taking the time to review my manuscript. Your grasp of its content and comments on its structure are helpful and encouraging. I have addressed each comment and suggestion below.

 

Comments and Suggestions:

1. In the first part of your comments, you mention that the hypothesis is not clearly presented. I have addressed this by revising my introduction to state my hypothesis more clearly and provide more transparency regarding the intention of the manuscript. The entire text of the manuscript has been edited and revised to improve clarity and reduce redundancy.

 

2. In the latter half of your comments, you mentioned that it would be interesting to see to what extent the results could be grouped and discussed according to hazard type based on their occurrence characteristics. I agree that this would be an intriguing query to explore. While understanding the shared characteristics and deterministic inputs of natural hazards based on exposure onset and duration, the scope of this paper is primarily concerned with providing the foundational methodology for accessing hazard exposure based on available data. The method's utility can allow for further analysis and grouping of hazards, but this paper was principally intended to address the exposure data gaps in natural hazard research.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

dear Authors, your research is well designed and show useful results, only I noticed that you should improve the clarity of text, since some sentences are complicate and long with many adjectival forms, that make unclear the meaning and the reasoning. Moreover, a better explanation of the n.5 diagram (box and whisker) would help.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

dear Authors, even though I am not a native English speaker, I recommend you to revise the text of your manuscript, because some sentences are too long, not fluent and clear, making the significance hard to follow.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you for taking the time to review my manuscript. Your comments on its structure and content are helpful and encouraging. I have addressed each comment and suggestion below.

 

Comments and suggestions:

1. In your comments, you mentioned that the clarity of the text should be improved. You also note that some sentences are too long, and the vocabulary makes it difficult to follow. I have addressed these issues by reducing the complexity of some sentences and editing the language and grammar throughout the text. These revisions should allow for an easier read and better understanding of the content.

 

2. You also mentioned that the box-and-whisker plot (Fig.5) was difficult to understand. I have addressed this comment by recoloring it with more contrasting colors to make the figure clearer. I have also revised the plot's explanation by improving the grammar and sentence structure.