Cultural Heritage in the Light of Flood Hazard: The Case of the “Ancient” Olympia, Greece
, Konstantinos Tsanakas 2, Nikolaos Stathopoulos 3, Demetrios E. Tsesmelis 4 and Andreas Tsatsaris 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. What are the various limitations in your work?
2. Which parameters you have taken into consideration?
3. Why author have selected Olympia greece as study area?
4. What is the use of RRIM map?
5. What is the resolution of DEM?
6. Which DEM is used for study?
7. Have you compared your work with other researchers?
8. Add the real and practical applications in the introduction.
9. Give citations wherever required.
Author Response
First of all, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her constructive comments in order to make our manuscript better. We answered all of the comments and we believe that we have covered all the arisen issues.
- What are the various limitations in your work?
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. A difficulty exists with regard to hydrological measurements, which do not exist for the present study area. This makes it difficult to carry out a condensation of the complex environmental factors that determine the hydrological regime of the site. It is understood that there is an inadequate and slowly developing understanding of how climate, soils, topography, and vegetation interact and co-evolve to produce the responses and function of catchments, and the selection of the best or most appropriate metrics. In addition, our ability to measure structural characteristics, hydroclimatic features, and functional elements with currently available measurement technology is minimal. Therefore, in order to overcome this problem, a detailed study of the catchment morphology was carried out with particular attention to the area of the archaeological site. There are two main limitations in the present analysis. The first one concerns the spatial resolution of the DEM (5x5 m pixel size). Although, it is an adequate resolution compared to the basin’s extent and considering the fact that the produced results (based on this scale analysis) exhibit a very good understanding of the characteristics and response of the basin, an even more detailed DEM would offer a more accurate analysis of the basin’s response to the two rainfall scenarios that were tested. Furthermore, another noteworthy limitation is the lack of field measurements, so that the results of this analysis can be compared and assessed with in-situ data. The possible existence of water discharge measurements (in various places in the basin), in terms of volume and time reaching the basin’s outlet, would help validate and/or improve/adjust the theoretical steps followed in this analysis. More importantly, ground-truth data close to the archeological site would offer important information for calibrating the algorithmic model and refining the theoretical assessment of the site’s flood susceptibility.
- Which parameters you have taken into consideration?
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. The parameters that we took into consideration come from the used data. The topography of the area through the digital elevation model and its secondary layers such as the slope, the flow direction, and the flow accumulation. These parameters together with the rainfall and the manning’s roughness coefficient provided the necessary discharges and flow velocities in order to calculate the isochrones.
- Why author have selected Olympia Greece as study area?
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. This is actually a very interesting comment. Olympia as it is known is the birthplace of the Olympic Games. It is an area that still many people want to visit, as it is an archaeological place, while almost half a million people visit it every year. This area has been known for floods since Ancient Greece (the fourth century AD). Also, Olympia is suffered already from another type of disaster 15 years ago. A fire almost burned the whole archaeological site. Thus it is a place where natural disasters can appear.
- What is the use of RRIM map?
Response: Thank you for the comment. This method is based on multi-layered topographic information computed from three-dimensional data like a DEM. The basic concept is the multiplication of three element layers, topographic slope, and positive and negative openness. In this way, RR can visualize not only topographic slopes, but also concavities and convexities at the same time. Negative openness represents concavities of surfaces and takes higher values on landforms such as valleys, gorges, or the inside parts of craters while positive openness represents convexities and is ideal for mapping crests, ridges, etc. In the revised version of the manuscript, we provide more information regarding the RRIM.
- What is the resolution of DEM?
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. The spatial resolution is 5X5 meters (pixel size). We have mentioned it within the manuscript (section 3.2.2).
- Which DEM is used for study?
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. The 5X5 meters DEM is provided by the Greek Cadaster. We have mentioned it within the manuscript.
- Have you compared your work with other researchers?
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. We have compared our work with the results of the “Fountoulis, I.; Mavroulis, S. Flood Hazard Assessment in the Kladeos River Basin (Olympia – Western Peloponnese, Greece). In Proceedings of the AQUA 2008 3rd International Conference; Athens, Greece, 2008” study. They are concluding, like us that the catchment is providing hydrographs typical to flash floods. We have also added this work to the manuscript.
- Add the real and practical applications in the introduction.
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. If we understood correctly your comment, we added the rainfall volume for the two scenarios in the last paragraph of the Introduction.
- Give citations wherever required.
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. We have provided the necessary citations within the manuscript where needed.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
February 15, 2023
Dear Authors:
This manuscript entitled “Cultural Heritage in the light of flood hazard. The case of the 2 “Ancient” Olympia, Greece” presents an application of a method for spatially distributed direct hydrograph estimation for the Kladeos River, near to the archaeological site of Ancient Olympia (Greece).
It is suggested that the authors clarify the objective of the study as well as the innovative contribution presented this manuscript should be more clearly clarified.
In the pdf attached there are other comments to improve the muscript.
Regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
First of all we would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her constructive comments in order to make our manuscript better. We answered to all of the comments and we believe that we have covered all the arisen issues.
- It is intresting to report also the use of LiDAR data for flood hazard assessment. For example, Guerriero et al., 2020 provide a new tool for flood hazard mapping developing an algorithm for flood hazard mapping in presence of multiple gauging stations, based on the use of high resolution LiDAR derived digital topography and discontinuous hydrometric data registered by multiple monitoring stations. Guerriero, L., Ruzza, G., Guadagno, F. M., & Revellino, P. (2020). Flood hazard mapping incorporating multiple probability models. Journal of Hydrology, 587, 125020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125020
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. We have added this reference.
- You should also cite others paper for which flooding area was estimated through a model that incorporate the SCS number method for runoff hydrographs estimation, in absence of hydrometric data, for the hydrological numerical modeling (e.g. Tufano et al., 2022) or for which the hydrographs derive by storm generated through statistic approaches (e.g. Nuswantoro et al., 2014) This can be useful to support and/or for a comparison of your study.
- Tufano, R., Guerriero, L., Annibali Corona, M., Cianflone, G., Di Martire, D., Ietto, F., ... & Calcaterra, D. (2022). Multiscenario flood hazard assessment using probabilistic runoff hydrograph estimation and 2D hydrodynamic modelling. Natural Hazards, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05710-3
- Nuswantoro, R., Diermanse, F., & Molkenthin, F. (2016). Probabilistic flood hazard maps for J akarta derived from a stochastic rain‐storm generator. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 9(2), 105-124. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12114
Response: We would like to thank you for the comment. We have added these references.
- P3L128 What parameters are reasonable for the travel time calculation? If it is estimate don the bases of morphological characters (e.g. slope) of the basin, how it can change for different cases?
Response: Thank you for the comment. The used model needs parameters related to the morphological status of a catchment. Such a parameter is the slope, derived from a DEM. The variation of the two events is due to the different distribution of rainfall. This is more clearly in Figure 4, where the distribution of the rainfall in two cases varies and therefore the discharge and the concertation time vary as well.
- You cannot speak of hazard if you don't define a return period of the event. You can use the term susceptibility (also in the title).
Response: Thank you for the comment. We have corrected the manuscript accordingly.
- What means Qchannel, Qoverland, Vchannel and Voverland? you should specify them in the caption (and also in the text).
Response: Thank you for the comment. We have corrected it in the Figure 3 caption and within the text.
- What parameters? Please specify them. What is this change based on?
Response: Thank you for the comment. We change the word parameters to distribution. Now the sentence is “Several simulations were carried out, changing the precipitation distribution in order to evaluate two different models, the final hypothetical and the real one”.
- P14 please insert the letters a,b,c,d at each figure and describe them individually in the caption.
Response: Thank you for the comment. We have changed figure 4 with better analysis and we inserted the recommended letters for each image.
- P14L345 Which ones? real or hypotetical?
Response: Thank you very much for this comment. We wrote within the text that “the form of the produced hydrograph of the real event is characteristic of a flash flood”.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Revision is appropriate
Reviewer 2 Report
I don't have other comments to the manuscript.
