Delineation of the Flooded Areas in Urban Environments Based on a Simplified Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents an interesting work on urban flooding management. A simplified approach based on flood volume and hydrological responses was proposed in the paper to address the research objective. 

Overall this paper is well prepared. Some minor issues for improving the technical quality as follows:

1. this work presents more the local application (i.e., case study), which is fine and acceptable. But the international connection and scientific significance should be enhanced by more thorough discussions on this topic, such as more recent and relevant paper discussions from literature. For this purpose the following references can be implemented in the paper: 

(1-a): Li, F., Yan, XF. & Duan, HF. Sustainable Design of Urban Stormwater Drainage Systems by Implementing Detention Tank and LID Measures for Flooding Risk Control and Water Quality Management. Water Resour Manage 33, 3271–3288 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-019-02300-0

(1-b): Tansar, H., Duan, HF. & Mark, O. Catchment-Scale and Local-Scale Based Evaluation of LID Effectiveness on Urban Drainage System Performance. Water Resour Manage 36, 507–526 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-03036-6.

(1-c): Stroumpoulis, A.; Kopanaki, E.; Karaganis, G. Examining the Relationship between Information Systems, Sustainable SCM, and Competitive Advantage. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11715. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132111715.

2. The proposed approach and implementation method in this study have been verified through the case study in Tulcea. However, from a practical perspective, uncertainties or randomness are unavoidable, which may affect the applicability or effectiveness of the method. Could the authors give relevant results or a brief discussion on this issue?

3. The results of case study are useful to the design and management of flood defense system in that city. However, it is also important, especially from a scientific point of view, to summarize the key findings on technical and/or scientific development on this topic, such as model applicability and accuracy, method development, theoretical insights on urban flooding issues.

I would be happy to see the revised and improved version published.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is interesting and pleasant to read. In my opinion, it can be published provided that a major revision is performed based on the following comments.

First of all, at the end of introduction, I suggest the Authors to highlight more in detail the aim of the manuscript and its novelty.

Second (line 148), a great part of the document is based on the event based rainfall runoff modeling, but in the recent years the continuous modeling has been developed and it is promising, in particular when flood volumes (and not only peak discharges) are needed for the analysis. I suggest the Authors discuss this topic. Suggested starting literature can be:

Grimaldi S., Nardi F., Piscopia R., Petroselli A., Apollonio C. 2021. Continuous hydrologic modelling for design simulation in small and ungauged basins: a step forward and some tests for its practical use. Journal of Hydrology 595, 125664.

Third, I did not fully understand lines 326-327. Did the Authors employ the IDF curves assuming a rainfall duration and then select a hyetograph shape similar to the observed one? By the way, did the Authors estimate the observed rainfall return period? Why not to use a common Chicago or ABS?

Minor comments:

Line 65: there is a typo in Development.

Line 150: why choose the empirical SCS loss model? Why for example not to choose a physically based yet simple model such as the Green-Ampt equation?

Line 160: I suggest the Authors to improve Figure 1 and text describing where the case study is located at national scale.

Line 222: there is a typo in diameters.

Line 287: please briefly describe the Curve Number and its possible values (0-100).

Line 323: please briefly describe the IDF curves.

Line 386: please explain the AMC condition (by the way, it is AMC-III, not AMC3).

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed my comments in this revised version.

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors addressed all my questions raised during the first review. I think that the article can now be pubished as it is.

My best regards