The Rain-Induced Urban Waterlogging Risk and Its Evaluation: A Case Study in the Central City of Shanghai
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
I have no more comments for the paper.
Author Response
Point 1: I have no more comments for the paper.
Response 1: Thanks for your kindly suggestions. Best wishes!
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Urban waterlogging has become an important problem facing the world and a major threat to sustainable development. The topic of this article is of scientific value and significance, especially in the case study of a mega city like Shanghai, which can find some meaningful knowledge. The main recommendations are as follows:
1. It is suggested to add statements on urban settlement and urban waterlogging control policies in relevant parts of Shanghai, which is an important influencing factor for the current waterlogging control in Shanghai.
2. It is suggested that the discussion be separated from the policy recommendations. The discussion part is to compare with the results of the existing research on waterlogging risk assessment in Shanghai. It is necessary to clarify some highlights of this paper, especially the differences with other studies. In the proposal part, systematic elaboration should be carried out from the perspective of governance, including ideas, policies, implementation, performance, etc.
3. It has been more than 10 years since 2011. Can we use the water accumulated ten years ago to build a model to predict the future urban water accumulation. Because in the past ten years, Shanghai's urban construction has developed rapidly and changed a lot. It is necessary to clarify its scientific nature.
4. The depth of ponding is closely related to the time and concentration of rainfall. Whether the author has considered factors such as rainfall intensity and duration. How to refine the rainfall factors may have more important significance for the study of urban waterlogging.
Author Response
Dear reviewers,
Thanks for all the reviewers’ comments. Following the comments and suggestions, the authors checked that all references are relevant to the contents of the manuscript. Any revisions made to the manuscript are marked up using the “Track Changes” function, such that changes can be easily viewed by the editors and reviewers. The instructions of manuscript revision are listed point to point as follows:
Point 1: It is suggested to add statements on urban settlement and urban waterlogging control policies in relevant parts of Shanghai, which is an important influencing factor for the current waterlogging control in Shanghai.
Response 1: Thanks for your suggestion. As stated in paragraph 4.5, we add statements on urban settlement and urban waterlogging control policies in relevant parts of Shanghai.
Point 2: It is suggested that the discussion be separated from the policy recommendations. The discussion part is to compare with the results of the existing research on waterlogging risk assessment in Shanghai. It is necessary to clarify some highlights of this paper, especially the differences with other studies. In the proposal part, systematic elaboration should be carried out from the perspective of governance, including ideas, policies, implementation, performance, etc.
Response 2: Discussion and policy recommendations are separated as two parts 4.4 and 4.5. In the discussion part 4.4, the authors compare the results in this manuscript with with the results of the existing research on waterlogging risk assessment in Shanghai. And, the authors clarify some highlights of this paper, especially the differences with other studies. In the proposal part 4.5, systematic elaboration is carried out from the perspective of governance, including ideas, policies, implementation and performance.
Point 3: It has been more than 10 years since 2011. Can we use the water accumulated ten years ago to build a model to predict the future urban water accumulation. Because in the past ten years, Shanghai's urban construction has developed rapidly and changed a lot. It is necessary to clarify its scientific nature.
Response 3: Thanks for your suggestions. The authors clarify its scientific nature in the discussion 4.4. Actually, the water accumulated has passed ten yeas, we examined the current situation and found it is not changed so much. So the waterlogging risk model presented in the manuscript is still qualified for current situation. But for predicting the future urban water accumulation, it needs new models considering future constructions and climate scenarios, which is the authors’ next research point. The purpose of this research is to find a practical model of urban waterlogging risk caused by rainfall, basically, the rainfall is the most important factor that is taken into account, so the authors presented it by a scientific basis on the relationship between the hourly rainfall and waterlogging risk.
Point 4: The depth of ponding is closely related to the time and concentration of rainfall. Whether the author has considered factors such as rainfall intensity and duration. How to refine the rainfall factors may have more important significance for the study of urban waterlogging.
Response 4: Thanks for your suggestions. The depth of ponding is closely related to the time and concentration of rainfall. In this manuscript, the rainfall data used are hourly rainfall, that is to say, the intensity of the rainfall is generally in consideration. In addition, most of the waterlogging events in Shanghai are caused by Short-time severe convective weather, which usually lasts 1-6 hours, therefore, rain duration research is best to use finer time scale rainfall data, such as 10-minute or minute level. That is the authors’ next research point. Again, thank you for pointing the way out for our research.
Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)
Few corrections are needed as follows:
Line 35 replace "at" with "in"
Linnes 348-350 the paragraph needs to be rephrased
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers,
Thanks for all the reviewers’ comments. Following the comments and suggestions, the authors checked that all references are relevant to the contents of the manuscript. Any revisions made to the manuscript are marked up using the “Track Changes” function, such that changes can be easily viewed by the editors and reviewers. The instructions of manuscript revision are listed point to point as follows:
Point 1: Line 35 replace "at" with "in"
Response 1: There is no "at" in Line 35, so there is no revision.
Point 2: Lines 348-350 the paragraph needs to be rephrased
Response 2: Lines 348-350 in the paragraph are rephrased.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I would be happy to review the paper because the subject is interesting. Urban waterlogging has a potential risk impact on property and safety. This paper presented a waterlogging depth model in different areas with different drainage capacities and rainfall in consumption of simplifying complex terrain and hydrological situation. Then a rain-induced urban Waterlogging risk model is established, and an evaluation of waterlogging risk in Shanghai central city. The authors have made beneficial attempts in this subject. The results show the urban waterlogging risk model is good for timely evaluation of the rain impact on waterlogging. It is convenient for the emergency agencies to disseminate warnings to the public, policy makers and relevant departments to mitigate traffic intensity and guarantee personal safety. The result of this paper presents a possible way and method to deal with waterlogging in advance.
In general, the content of this article is sufficient, the data analysis is clear and the principle is accurate. The article is well organized and its presentation is good. However, some minor issues still need to be improved:
The figures would benefit from being redrawn using appropriate graph-plotting software. For example, in Figure 1, a and b pictures are required to meet the publication requirements. In Figure 5 and Figure 6, legends should be appropriately redrawn in the same style.
There are some writing language problems in this manuscript. Appropriate words should be chosen, ambiguous or easily ambiguous sentences should be improved, and spelling should be proofread to make the overall expression of the paper fluent and professional, for example, in 4.2 and 4.3.
After the submission has been revised, I highly recommend this paper for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments
1、 The abstract needs to be revised and condensed in order to further reflect the main findings of the article. It is important to focus on the main findings of the article.
2、 Too few keywords, suggest to increase to five.
3、 The introduction is not enough for the review of current urban flooding, it should be further reviewed with the main idea of this paper, especially adding the relevant research results in the past two years, and at the same time, the research problem of this paper should be highlighted, and it should be clear what is the difference between the research problem of this paper and the existing research findings, which will be the basis of this paper.
4、 It is recommended to integrate Figure 3 into the logical framework diagram of the full text, that is, to create a logical framework diagram about the full text. In addition, it is proposed to add a scale and a compass to Figure 1. Some of the figures in the text are also modified accordingly.
5、 Whether the depth data from 2001-2011 still truly reflect the current situation. This is because China's urban construction is changing rapidly, and urban renewal and renovation of urban drainage networks and waterlogged roadways are constantly evolving. For example, Beijing's drainage network and the renovation of waterlogged roads have been greatly improved in the last decade after the 2012 heavy rainstorm. It is debatable whether the use of a decade old situation still truly reflects the characteristics of the present.
6、 Depth is closely related to rainfall intensity, rainfall duration, and rainfall type (typhoon-induced, or cyclonic weather process), which is under-represented in the correlation analysis. The modeling of rainfall with depth alone may create some problems.
7、 The discussion and recommendation section of the paper is slightly weak, and the authors are advised to compare the paper with existing studies around uncertainty and innovation to strengthen the scientific nature of the paper.
8、 The concluding section suggests a point-by-point discussion, stating clearly the main findings of the paper. The current way of writing is not conducive to the reader's discovery of innovative points.
9、 It is suggested to increase the number of papers on the subject of waterlogging in Water journal and other journals in the past 2 years.
Reviewer 3 Report
In this paper, a Rain-induced Urban Waterlogging Risk Model(RUWRM) is established to evaluate waterlogging risk in the central city. The Rain-induced urban waterlogging risk model can rapidly gives the waterlogging rank caused by rainfall with a clear classification collection.
It is true that waterlogging is mainly caused by rainfall, but the theoretical basis for directly analyzing the relationship between waterlogging and rainfall by using correlation coefficient is not solid enough. Especially in Shanghai, factors such as tide level and river level should be considered. In addition, the impact of artificial drainage should also be considered?
several comments are as follows:
A description should be added when the abbreviation first appears, such as AWS on line 116.
It is necessary to explain the spatial-temporal consistency of the collected waterlogging data and whether the data are complete.
Line 215,This statement may not be accurate:It is supposed to express as a linear relationship with rainfall.
Fig 4, Some R2 are very low, especially in (d). Can they be used for risk assessment?
The distribution of AWS and drainage zones should be inclued in the manuscript.
In 3.2, Is it a water accumulation point with the maximum depth in the area that is used for risk classification by waterlogging depth?
Reviewer 4 Report
The study focuses on the setup of the relationship between the urban waterlogging risk, rainfall and drainage capacity in the central city of Shanghai, based on the development of a Waterlogging Depth Model used further to build a Rain-induced Urban Waterlogging Risk Model. The premise of this work is pretty well explained, but too focused on Chinese cities, inducing the idea that the waterlogging risk is a local issue. My suggestion to authors is to extend the reference base to include cities all over the world facing similar difficulty.
The article’s structure is presented in a clear manner and, the content is relatively easy to follow. However, the article needs some additional scientifically based information (see the suggestion bellow), editing corrections (marked within the uploaded pdf manuscript) and figures enhancement (e.g. resolution, replacement of Chinese characters with Latin characters) in order to be published.
As a suggestion of added value for your study would be to include the assessment of rain-induced urban waterlogging risk under the different future projection/climate change scenarios. These information would be really valuable for policy makers and city authorities.
In conclusion, the paper has potential to be published after major revisions as suggested bellow.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
