Statistical Analysis of the Wave Runup at Walls in a Changing Climate by Means of Image Clustering

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work reported here is a statical analysis of wave run-up walls through image clustering. The work is interesting. 

1. The proposed work is an extension of the existing image clustering method. How the proposed work is different from existing one need to clarify properly.

2. Limitations of the proposed method need to be discussed.

3. Some of the photographs are presented without any scaling. All the photographs are to be presented with the same scaling for better understanding.

Writing need to be updated throughout. 

Author Response

Manuscript water-2425834: “STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WAVE RUNUP AT WALLS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE BY MEANS OF IMAGE CLUSTERING”

We would like to thank the Reviewers for the very constructive comments that allowed a significant improvement of the manuscript. In particular, we would like to thank: Reviewer #1 for suggesting us to highlight the main novelties of the proposed methodology; 2) Reviewer #2, who asked us to improve and clarify the description of the outcomes of the procedure; 3) Reviewer #3 for his/her comment about the equations adopted to characterize the accuracy of the procedure, because it led to a more insightful description of the Reprojection Error.

Overall, we tried to make the description of the methods adopted and of the main findings clearer and more precise. To address the comments of the Associate Editor and Reviewers, as main revisions, we have:

• Fully revised and expanded the text, the contents and the outline of Section 5, including two new figures (9 and 10), in order to point out the aim of the analyses carried out and present more clearly the findings;
• Revised Sub-section 3.1 to include the description of the equations underlying the parameters listed in Table 2;
• Specified more clearly the main novelties of the methodology
• Revised and slightly expanded the Conclusions to better outline the main findings and the limitations of the proposed work.

Detailed answers to the Reviewers’ Reports are given below in Italics.

 

Reviewer 1

Extensive editing of English language required

The whole manuscript has been reviewed checking and improving the English language. Thank you.

The work reported here is a statical analysis of wave run-up walls through image clustering. The work is interesting. 

1. The proposed work is an extension of the existing image clustering method. How the proposed work is different from existing one need to clarify properly.

The distinction between the new and the existing part of the procedure is basically given by the scheme of Figure 3, where the “New part of the methodology” was already marked. A short description was already present in Sub-section 3.1, whereas the details about the new parts of the methodology were already described in Section 4. However, we acknowledge that the titles of Sections 3 and 4 might result unclear. Therefore, to better highlight the difference between the existing and the new part we:

• slightly modified the description of the outline of the manuscript in the Introduction section (lines 96-106);
• highlighted into a bulleted list the new parts/procedures of the methodology in Sub-section 3.1 (lines 236-246);
• added the following sentence at the beginning of Section 4: “As described in Sub-section 3.1 and synthesized in the scheme of Figure 3, the new part of the methodology presented in this contribution basically consists in the procedures specifically set up for the reconstruction of the wave runup at the crown walls” (lines 311-313).

2. Limitations of the proposed method need to be discussed.

The limitations have been now included in the Conclusions section (lines 719-726).

3. Some of the photographs are presented without any scaling. All the photographs are to be presented with the same scaling for better understanding.

The scaling has been added in Figures 6, 7 and 10. The scale was not added in Figures 2 and 5 because such figures are not supposed to provide any quantitative information. Thank you for this comment.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The draft by Formentin and Zanuttigh describe and expands upon previous reports of the authors related to statistical and parametric analysis of wave runup at walls based on video-analysis of lab experiments simulating this type of events. Coming from a slightly different background, the methodology and set-up seem appropriate to quantify the effect of wave runup by image cluster analysis. The introductory part seems informative enough. Affiliation no. 2 should be deleted if not applicable .

However, the discussion of results is not that clear, and the significance of the findings is not always immediate. The results of the tests TWx (x=1-8) should be better presented in a table, along with main findings and relevance. The whole Section 5 seems too convoluted, and needs to be presented in much clearer terms. For instance, there is no need for the Test IDs in Table 2 to be called R00H05s3G30c4W5p, when all there is different is the c()W()p -part. All the discussion part needs to be simplified.

Hence, I recommend minor revision with the main message to try and present their findings in a way that is easier to read and understand.

There are some minor typos that need to be corrected.

Author Response

Manuscript water-2425834: “STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WAVE RUNUP AT WALLS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE BY MEANS OF IMAGE CLUSTERING”

We would like to thank the Reviewers for the very constructive comments that allowed a significant improvement of the manuscript. In particular, we would like to thank: Reviewer #1 for suggesting us to highlight the main novelties of the proposed methodology; 2) Reviewer #2, who asked us to improve and clarify the description of the outcomes of the procedure; 3) Reviewer #3 for his/her comment about the equations adopted to characterize the accuracy of the procedure, because it led to a more insightful description of the Reprojection Error.

Overall, we tried to make the description of the methods adopted and of the main findings clearer and more precise. To address the comments of the Associate Editor and Reviewers, as main revisions, we have:

• Fully revised and expanded the text, the contents and the outline of Section 5, including two new figures (9 and 10), in order to point out the aim of the analyses carried out and present more clearly the findings;
• Revised Sub-section 3.1 to include the description of the equations underlying the parameters listed in Table 2;
• Specified more clearly the main novelties of the methodology
• Revised and slightly expanded the Conclusions to better outline the main findings and the limitations of the proposed work.

Detailed answers to the Reviewers’ Reports are given below in Italics.

 

Reviewer 2

Improve methods description

Improve presentation of the results

The whole Section 5 was completely rethought to improve the methods description and the presentation of the results. In particular, the introduction to the Section has been expanded to give more details about the analyses carried out and a new scheme has been introduced as Figure 9 to illustrate and summarize the concepts.

The draft by Formentin and Zanuttigh describe and expands upon previous reports of the authors related to statistical and parametric analysis of wave runup at walls based on video-analysis of lab experiments simulating this type of events. Coming from a slightly different background, the methodology and set-up seem appropriate to quantify the effect of wave runup by image cluster analysis. The introductory part seems informative enough.

Affiliation no. 2 should be deleted if not applicable .

Affiliation no. 2 has been removed. Thanks.

However, the discussion of results is not that clear, and the significance of the findings is not always immediate.

The discussion of the results has been improved by fully reviewing the outline and the text of Section 5. The main findings have been highlighted by listing them in bulleted lists. References to practical applications of the outcomes and their employment for design purpose have been included.

The results of the tests TWx (x=1-8) should be better presented in a table, along with main findings and relevance.

This comment was not completely understood, since most of the results (probability of exceedance curves and envelopes of the wave runup) require graphical presentation. As for the comparison with literature formulae (Figure 12), we think that the presentation of the results in charts allows for a more immediate interpretation of the main findings (effect of the wave breaking and of the parapet). However, if including these data in Table is prior to the manuscript acceptance, we can replace the figures with such a Table or add it.

The whole Section 5 seems too convoluted, and needs to be presented in much clearer terms. For instance, there is no need for the Test IDs in Table 2 to be called R00H05s3G30c4W5p, when all there is different is the c()W()p -part.

The name of the tests was removed from both Tables 1 and 2; the IDs only were kept.

As for Section 5, we agree with Reviewer and completely revised it. Please, see our previous comments and descriptions about the update and restyling of Section 5, including our general comment at the beginning of this Report.

All the discussion part needs to be simplified. Hence, I recommend minor revision with the main message to try and present their findings in a way that is easier to read and understand.

We do think to have improved the presentation and discussion of the results with the thorough revision of Section 5.

There are some minor typos that need to be corrected.

We did our best to review the whole text to improve the English language and remove/correct the many typos we had found.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

I think this is a nice and intersting work. Here I suggest the authors several points to improve the structure of the manuscript before publishing. 

1. Line 117-128, should be in the caption of Figure 1.

2. The concetual scheme shown in Figure 3 should be concite. the current form is not recommended.

3. Please show the equations deriving the Table 2.

Author Response

Manuscript water-2425834: “STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WAVE RUNUP AT WALLS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE BY MEANS OF IMAGE CLUSTERING”

We would like to thank the Reviewers for the very constructive comments that allowed a significant improvement of the manuscript. In particular, we would like to thank: Reviewer #1 for suggesting us to highlight the main novelties of the proposed methodology; 2) Reviewer #2, who asked us to improve and clarify the description of the outcomes of the procedure; 3) Reviewer #3 for his/her comment about the equations adopted to characterize the accuracy of the procedure, because it led to a more insightful description of the Reprojection Error.

Overall, we tried to make the description of the methods adopted and of the main findings clearer and more precise. To address the comments of the Associate Editor and Reviewers, as main revisions, we have:

• Fully revised and expanded the text, the contents and the outline of Section 5, including two new figures (9 and 10), in order to point out the aim of the analyses carried out and present more clearly the findings;
• Revised Sub-section 3.1 to include the description of the equations underlying the parameters listed in Table 2;
• Specified more clearly the main novelties of the methodology
• Revised and slightly expanded the Conclusions to better outline the main findings and the limitations of the proposed work.

Detailed answers to the Reviewers’ Reports are given below in Italics.

 

Reviewer 3

I think this is a nice and intersting work. Here I suggest the authors several points to improve the structure of the manuscript before publishing. 

1. Line 117-128, should be in the caption of Figure 1.

Apologize, but we think that the list of symbols given in lines 115-127 of the revised manuscript should be kept in the text because they are referenced throughout the text. Moreover, such text includes a few comments (e.g. “B is the width of the dike crest that, following the EurOtop [29] manual classification of the structure types, is schematized as a berm and will be referenced as such hereinafter”) that are beyond a pure description of the symbols as suitable for a figure caption. Anyway, if this is prior to the manuscript acceptance, we can move the text in the Figure capture as required.

2. The concetual scheme shown in Figure 3 should be concite. the current form is not recommended.

We acknowledge that the scheme of Figure 3 is expansive, but we didn’t shorten it because the Reviewers #1 and #2 asked to be more detailed about the novelties of the methodology and the methods adopted – and bot these aspects are illustrated in Figure 3.

3. Please show the equations deriving the Table 2.

The new equations (1), (2) and (3) describing the three parameters of Table 2 have been now included in Sub-section 3.3. A more detailed description of the reprojection error has been added too.