Flood Hazards in Flat Coastal Areas of the Eastern Iberian Peninsula: A Case Study in Oliva (Valencia, Spain)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presented a case study of flood hazards analysis in the flat coastal area using hydrologic model. This topic is interesting. However, this paper has some issues, and the structure of this paper needs to be reframed to clear the scientific contributions of this study.

1) The abstract needs to be rewritten. The abstract should include the main research methods and important research conclusions.

2) Materials and methods are too redundant, and some information is irrelevant to the research content.

3) Some figures and tables express little information and can be removed, such as Fig.5, Fig.8, table 2, fig.9, fig. 10.

4) There is no Conclusion section.

5) There are too many grammatical errors in the paper, which need to be edited by native speakers of English.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, 
Your work is interesting and of practical interest. Here are my comments aimed at improving the content of the manuscript.
1.    The Discussion section should be better structured. Firstly, much attention is paid to predicted changes in precipitation, but the results obtained are less discussed. Secondly, it is advisable to move the limitations and uncertainties of your research into a new section or subsection so that the reader can better see the weaknesses of the findings obtained. Thirdly, a separate section "Conclusions" is needed, where the authors should briefly summarize their research, give its main results.
2.    Avoid using the word "analysis" in the titles of manuscripts. Any qualitative research is analysis.
3.    In the Abstract, it is necessary to describe the results obtained more clearly. Avoid general phrases.
4.    Table 1. What is the significance of "centroid elevation"? Why not the average elevation of the sub-basins? If you mean average elevation, why are the values in the "Elevation" column so low? The average elevation in each basin studied is nowhere more than 200 m. Thus, your study area is lowland (or plain)! What mountains do the authors write about in the manuscript? How does this compare with the DEM in Figure 4a? I don't understand what the authors meant. 
5.    Figure 5. To which meteorological station does the reported precipitation data refer? Where is it? What is the duration of precipitation observations? There is no information about this in the text of the manuscript. How representative are data from this station for the entire study region? Would you please give more details? Remove the outer frame from the figure. 
6.    Figure 7 is poorly readable.
7.    What are the units of measurement in Figure 8b and 8b, and Figure 9b? What is the scale?
8.    Remove the outer frame in Figures 10 a, b, c.
9.    What do the three different lines in Figure 11 mean?
10.    Remove the outer frame in Figures 13 b, c.

I highly recommend improving the quality and readability of most figures.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting study focusing on describing the optimum approach in carrying out flood studies (hydrological and hydraulic) in the Eastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Mediterranean coast, by exploring a case study. The authors have done a good job with this study in terms of having a very clear approach, very clear objectives, research organization and results. I have only few concerns as follows:

Major concerns:

1) The Discussion section is under developed. The authors have done a poor job in discussing their results in terms of comparing with other approaches, describing the pros and cons, the limitations and other findings from the literature.

2) The authors have done a poor job in illustrating what is the novelty and the added value of their work. I suggest to enrich their discussion section and write a conclusions section in which they should highlight what are the key new things we learn from their work. Why their work is not a consulting firm’s product of hydraulic simulation submitted in the local authorities, but it should be on a research article published in a scientific journal? As a reviewer I understand why, but it should be very clear for the reader, so I suggest to the authors to include a detailed reasoning in the Discussion section. I strongly believe that the manuscript would benefit from such an addition.

Minor

- There is not much comparison with other studies in the literature when it comes to the pros and cons of the suggested approach. What others do differently in the region? How it is different (better or worse) than the present study?

- In figure 4: usually when we delineate sub-basins they tend to have an outlet where the drainage divide creates a sort of an acute angle towards the sea. On the contrary, the way subbasins are drawn by the authors in Fig4 (red lines) are straight lines parallel to the coastline (see for example C17, C18) where it is not clear where the outlet of the catchment is. Is this because it is a marsh area or a mistake in drawing the drainage divides?

- Figure 12: I suggest to the authors to explain the reason why the hydraulic simulation results show these 3 straight lines vertical to the flow (and parallel to roads), where it seems no flow is passing through for most of their part. I suggest that the explanation can be detailed on the caption of the figure as well. So a more clear explanation why the simulation shows these linear elements vertical to the river should be included.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors adequately addressed my comments. The article has been improved.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

1. I recommend not using two sentences in the title of the manuscript. Please use a colon: "Flood hazards in flat coastal areas of the Eastern Iberian Peninsula: A case study in Oliva (Valencia, Spain)". Remove the dot from the end of the manuscript title. Check the manuscript title against the title in the "Citation:" column on the left of the first page.
2. I still highly recommend improving the quality of Figure 8c because this figure is not included in the Supplementary Materials. Increase the font size. 
3. Please increase the font size on the graphs in Figure 10 because this figure is also not included in the Supplementary Materials.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have done a very good job in addressing the concerns/remarks by adding very useful amendments of text in the results/discussion/conclusions. I suggest that the manuscript should be accepted in its present form and considered for publication.