Urban Marginalization and the Declining Capacity for Disaster Risks in Contemporary China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

-It would be relevant to include (anticipate) some conclusions at the end of your Abstract.

-As mentioned in the web, “Reviews: These provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research. Systematic reviews should follow the PRISMA guidelines.”

It seems you should follow PRISMA guidelines (which needs to include a flow diagram in some part of your proposal).

Otherwise, this is an interesting and comprehensive review that helps to get an idea of the studies needed in this area.

Perhaps it would need a section indicating specific studies in this area, as well as a review similar to a bibliometric analysis that would help to gain a detailed knowledge of aspects such as authors, countries and the most significant topics in relation to publications.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
We are extremely grateful for your constructive feedback. It has greatly improved the quality of our
manuscript.
In the revised manuscript, the newly added and altered sections are highlighted in red, to hopefully
facilitate your review.
The answers for the suggestions and comments are as follows.
Point 1: It would be relevant to include (anticipate) some conclusions at the end of your Abstract.
Authors’ responses:
Thanks for your valuable suggestions.
According to your suggestion, it has been revised to “This study is concluded that urbanization-induced
marginalization has adverse impacts on structural resistance to external pressures such as natural
disasters.”
Point 2: Perhaps it would need a section indicating specific studies in this area, as well as a review
similar to a bibliometric analysis that would help to gain a detailed knowledge of aspects such as
authors, countries and the most significant topics in relation to publications.
Authors’ responses:
We highly appreciate your valuable suggestions.
According to your suggestions, we added a new section and some graphics. Based on the bibliometric
analysis, we discussed the development trend of global disaster studies in this section. In addition, we
presented specific research in this area, and examined the current state of disaster research in China. It
is hoped that this section will assist in better understanding the current state of disaster research in
China as well as the necessity of this article.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is suitable for the journal.

Unfortunately the abstract is more promissing than the paper itself. The paper does not highlight sufficiently in its structure the issues in the abstract and the title related to disaster. I recommend having a separate section or more space in the discussion (this section is missing) for this. For example I also suggest reading papers by Armas on the issues of social side of vulnerability. Also the Global Earthquake Model has an important social vulnerability component, and there is a paper co-authored by Tina Kunz-Plapp, sociologist, contributing to this (as extension of her doctorate on social vulnerability as well) VuWiki., developing an ontology for this. It is an approach which could be followed to organise also the literature reviewed in this paper. Also the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center is conducting research on how considering social coping with disasters can lead to more resilience. I recommend to look in this context to the problem and reorganise, highlighting the disaster component. Maybe some graphics would help.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Dear reviewer,
We are extremely grateful for your constructive feedback. It has greatly improved the quality of our
manuscript.
In the revised manuscript, the newly added and altered sections are highlighted in red, to hopefully
facilitate your review.
The answers for the suggestions and comments are as follows.
Point 1: Unfortunately the abstract is more promissing than the paper itself. The paper does not
highlight sufficiently in its structure the issues in the abstract and the title related to disaster. I
recommend having a separate section or more space in the discussion (this section is missing) for this.
Authors’ responses:
We highly appreciate the reviewer for the kind comments and suggestions. We have added a separate
section based on your suggestions, but we still want to make some explanations.
Instead of talking about disasters, we are discussing the state of society prior to the disaster, and how
the social factors will affect the population's or society's ability to resist and adapt to disasters. So many
disaster studies traditionally from natural sciences and engineering that focus on disaster events are
now shifting to a focus on social processes and risk distribution.
This paper does not necessarily aim to fully discuss the term of vulnerability. In fact, we have replaced
vulnerability with marginalization, because "Not all populations and places in urban China are
vulnerable, and marginalized populations and areas are particularly vulnerable."
In China, the study of social vulnerability, particularly with marginalization as the main feature, is a
relatively new and developing topic. We believe that before vulnerability assessments and policy
recommendations, they should take into account the country's or society's local background.
Point 2: I also suggest reading papers by Armas on the issues of social side of vulnerability. Also the
Global Earthquake Model has an important social vulnerability component, and there is a paper
co-authored by Tina Kunz-Plapp, sociologist, contributing to this (as extension of her doctorate on
social vulnerability as well) VuWiki., developing an ontology for this. It is an approach which could be
followed to organise also the literature reviewed in this paper.
Authors’ responses:
Thank you very much for the papers you recommended to us. We read them carefully, cited some of
them, and followed them to organise literatures.
This paper is the work before vulnerability assessment. Before assessing, we want to fully understand
the causes of vulnerability in the target area and society. Therefore, the primary purpose of this article
is neither to assess nor target specific disasters, but to explore the background that leads to the
increasing vulnerability of contemporary urban China and poses a threat to disaster prevention. Despite
the fact that many vulnerability assessment studies skip this step, we believe that understanding the
local context of social vulnerability can help to employ appropriate proxy indicators. So, we expect that
this paper will serve as a theoretical and social foundation for vulnerability assessment and indicator
selection.
Point 3: I recommend to look in this context to the problem and reorganise, highlighting the disaster
component. Maybe some graphics would help.
Authors’ responses:
Thanks for your valuable suggestions.
According to your suggestion, we added a new section and some graphics. Based on the bibliometric
analysis, we discussed the development trend of global disaster studies in this section. In addition, we
presented specific research in this area, and examined the current state of disaster research in China,
bridging the discussion on social vulnerability and disaster studies. It is hoped that this section will
assist in better understanding the current state of disaster research in China as well as the necessity of
this article.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper improved indeed compared to the last version and the authors made the main focus understandable by changing it to causes of vulnerability (ie marginalisation). The added figure on network model of keywords make this particularly visual.