Extreme Inundation Statistics on a Composite Beach
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
A numerical model based on the 1d non-linear shallow water equations is used to find statistics for extreme run-up events from a random wave field on a sloping beach. This is a promising approach that gives some useful insights into the conditions that are more likely to result in inundation in practical applications. Overall the paper is well-organised and well-presented, but there are number of places where some further explanation or clarification is necessary, especially for a general journal like Water. These and some other suggestions for improving the work, are given below.
~line 112: You need to explain and define the Gaussian distribution and what you mean by wide and narrow band. You need a reference (at least) for the Kolmogorv-Smirnov test.
line 122: what do you mean by “workers”? do you mean cores or something else? – a bit more information about the hardware would be useful
It might be useful to consider the Iribarren or surf similarity parameter in analysing the waves, and identifying the type of breaking: for example you might expect plunging breakers to be less well-captured by the numerical model because of the overturning, while the type of breaking might be useful in analysing or discussing your results.
~line 151 you need to define Rayleigh and Weibull distribution
line 166: when you say “a considerable number” roughly what proportion do you mean?
On Figure 8, perhaps indicate somehow the amount of wave breaking
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The problem considered in the manuscript was to study the statistical characteristics of long irregular wave runup, using long time-series numerical computations to analyze the extreme runup statistics.
All simulations were based on the standard shallow water model with initially narrow and wide banded Gaussian wave fields.
It is shown that the probability distribution functions of runup oscillations has not a normal distribution, and shifted to the right towards larger positive values with an increase in nonlinearity. The calculated significant essential runup heights for wide-banded waves is always higher than for narrow-banded waves.
The text of the article is clearly written, results are rather impressive, my comments are mostly related to the graphical presentation of the research.
- Six Figures 2(a,b,c) and 3(a,b,c) are presented in the text by only one sentence: “For narrow-band cases, the waves are arranged in groups (Figure 2), while for a wide-band case they are not (Figure 3)”. It is a little bit hard to say, that it is an amazing extraordinary new result for scientific community, and in any case, this observation has no direct connection to the results presented. Four of Figures 2(a, b) and 3(a, b) are absolutely no informative and have to be excluded from the text of the paper. May be also a good idea to think again about necessity to present Figures 2(c) and 3(c).
- It looks like authors try to present all received results for all considered cases for five values of significant wave heights. But results for some of them have negligible difference and may be omitted (Figures 4 and 5 and other Figures).
- What exactly probability distribution PDF functions are presented at Figures 4(a,c) 4(b,d), 5(a,c), 5(b,d) – impossible to find any differences in designations.
- Figure 9 shows probability distribution functions of large runup heights (R ≥ 0.7 Rs), for narrow-band and wide-band spectra, for different nonlinearities. Presented results are interesting, but again too much information and mixing in the one figure. I’ll suggest to separate narrow-band and wide-band cases into two figures.
The paper may be published in the Journal “Water” after major revision.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is concise and well presented, my corrections are given below.
My main concern at the present point is how does this paper fill in the literature knowledge gaps? How is it important to further applications in the field?
The problem that was solved and the novelty of the paper is yet to be clarified and needs to be properly highlighted at the intro.
REVIEW OF ARTICLE 788600
Line 20: are instead of is
Line 38: which rigorous solution? Please specify
Line 51: avoid the use of familiar language in a scientific article, such as “we”. Use the passive form of writing in these cases. Correct this throughout the paper, for example, again in line 54, 76, 307 etc…
Line 51 to 53: So I guess on top of the error associated to statistic techniques you have an added error related to the method used to obtain the digital data.
Comment: the final contribution of the paper to the state-of-the-art should be clearer. I think instead of a paragraph addressing the sections of the paper, having a final paragraph related to the actual contribution of the paper would be more important. Also the data you address in this paper is for any particular place, numerical setup or so ever? It isn’t clear at the intro.
Comment: Why does this topic deserve a particular attention? This needs to be stated clearly at the intro.
Comment: some abbreviatures should be defined before they are brought to the paper, e.g. UNO2, CFL…please correct this.
Line 95: should? Or either the conclusions hold on or not… Avoid the use of dubious language.
Line 105: or either a symbol “(” is missing or the symbol ) in this line is no longer needed and should be deleted.
Line 113: Where are the Kolmogorov-Smirnov results?
Legends of figure 2 and 3 – should have the s and the 0 as sub-script.
Line 156-157: ok, but why?
Line 166: Please do not start the sentences with “And”.
Figure 4 – the quality of the images should be considerably improved. Also define the abbreviature PDF. The same for figure 5 and 7.
Comment: In several of these results, which seem legit, there is a considerable agreement with previous theoretical studies and other research presented in the literature. However, I wonder what is the actual contribution of the present paper? It is still not clear to me as a reader.
Line 262: sub-script for symbols Hs and h0
Line 290: “where the “small Hs” group is always higher than the “large Hs” group.” – shou it be the other way around?
Figure 9 – needs a distinction between the continuous and the dashed lines at the legend.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript has been significantly improved and now warrants publication in Water.
Author Response
We would like to thank you for important suggestions
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
After your revisions of the paper, I found that the quality has improved quite considerably, to point that the article can be published.
I would like to appreciate also the improvements you made on your introduction, which has now a much better discussion of past works and also the clarifications made regarding the methodologies applied.
I have one final suggestion. The statistical content of your work might be applicable to several other aspects of coastal and maritime engineering. Thus it would be important at the very end of the work to add a very minor sentence, where you draw the readers' attention to such potential for synergies with other works in other maritime fields of activity, in shallow waters and also when it comes to wave-run up in structures at shallow waters.So for the benefit of the reader, I suggest the following, on the Conclusions:
"...on a beach (freak runups). In addition, in future applications the statistical analysis hereby provided might also be useful in the study of the wave run-up phenomenon in other applications, e.g. in structures placed in shallow water conditions [31, 32]."
For references 31 and 32 I suggest these two recent works that provide interesting reviews of statistical methods for structures placed in maritime shallow water conditions.
Vanem, E., Fazeres-Ferradosa, T., Rosa-Santos, P., Taveira-Pinto, F. Statistical description and modelling of extreme ocean wave conditions (2019) Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Maritime Engineering, 172 (4), pp. 124-132. DOI: 10.1680/jmaen.2019.20Fazeres-Ferradosa, T., Taveira-Pinto, F., Vanem, E., Reis, M.T., Neves, L.D. Asymmetric copula–based distribution models for met-ocean data in offshore wind engineering applications (2018) Wind Engineering, 42 (4), pp. 304-334.DOI: 10.1177/0309524X18777323
Congratulations on the good work!
Author Response
We would like to thank you for your a useful suggestion.
The suggested sentence: 'In addition, in future applications the statistical analysis hereby provided might also be useful in the study of the wave run-up phenomenon in other applications, e.g. in structures placed in shallow water conditions [31, 32].' has been added on its place.
- Vanem, E.; Fazeres-Ferradosa, T.; Rosa-Santos; P.; Taveira-Pinto, F. Statistical description and modelling of extreme ocean wave conditions. In Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Maritime Engineering:Thomas Telford Ltd, Volume 172 Issue 4, December 2019, 124-132.
- Fazeres-Ferradosa, T.; Taveira-Pinto, F.; Vanem, E.; Reis, M.T.; Neves, L.D. Asymmetric copula–based distribution models for met-ocean data in offshore wind engineering applications. Wind Engineering 2018, 42(4), 304-334.
