Develop a coupled agent-based modeling approach for uncertain water management decisions by Jin-Young Hyun, Shih-Yu Huang, Y. C. Ethan Yang, Vincent Tidwell and Jordan Macknick

I am satisfied with the manner in which the authors have responded to the comments of the two reviewers. The responses demonstrate that the authors have carefully and seriously considered the comments and suggestions, and provided plausible responses.

I agree with the comment of reviewer 1 that the title of the paper may need to be revised, and I am happy with the reply by the authors.

I therefore invite the authors to submit an improved version of the manuscript, consistent with the responses made to the two reviews. In addition, I would like the authors to consider also the following three minor comments from my side:

1. I have one question not raised by the two reviewers, and it relates to what the manuscript states in lines 363-366:
“Note that the information of winter precipitation … was gathered from NOAA ground-based rainfall monitoring gauges where we used the coming year’s winter precipitation as a proxy for the snowpack forecast in the causal structure.”
This might seem to suggest perfect knowledge on future water conditions, which might seem to be inconsistent with the purpose of the paper, namely to include uncertainty in water management decisions. I invite the authors to explain how this information was included in their modelling framework.

2. I also invite the authors to address several quite odd typos and grammatical inaccuracies in the manuscript (e.g. in lines 38, 56, 1012, 102, 120, 127, 132, 192, 315, 380, 539, 558, 561).

3. I also want to point out that SI units are used in HESS. So please also give the SI equivalents (m2 or ha, m, m3 and m3/s) of acre, feet, acre-feet and cfs when used in the text. I did not understand the unit “ac-ft mm” used in the revised Table 1. No clue what it means. Kindly explain. Note that the “manuscript preparation guidelines for authors” explicitly states that “The use of SI units or SI-derived units is mandatory.” (https://www.hydrology-and-earth-system-sciences.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html)

Success!

Pieter van der Zaag

Dear authors,

Thanks for the revised version of the manuscript. Although the manuscript now looks coherent, I still have the following remaining observations, which I kindly request you to address. This involves minor work and can be quickly done.

1. I could not find the Table and the Figures. Kindly submit these, as I need to check these.

2. Title: you have indeed changed the title, but now I ask myself: is the objective to quantify risk perception or to analyse the role of uncertainty and risk perception in water management decisions? If the latter this needs to be reflected in the title. Could the following resolve this:
“Using a coupled agent-based modeling approach to analyse the role of risk perception in water management decisions”

3. There must be a brief paragraph explaining the structure of the paper towards the end of section 1 (Introduction, after line 110), as you had done in the original version (lines 143-147)

4. The following editorial issues need to be addressed (with line numbers indicated):
L35: that subject to -> that is subject to
L67: Implementating -> Implementing
L78: uncertainties
L98: implementation
L133: coupled -> couple
L148: setting -> setup
L154: delete “taking”
L194: do -> does
L195: to stick -> sticks
L226: less the probability -> less than the probability
L268: water consumption -> water consumer
L325-326: “… was not taken from RiverWare; rather was gathered from NOAAA ...” isn’t the following formulation much more straightforward: “… was taken from NOAAA ...”
L329: “winter perception”: do you mean “winter precipitation”?
L332: “proceeding factors that considered by all …” do you mean “preceding factors considered by all …”?
L369: manual -> manually
L372: with larger irrigated area first -> with the largest irrigated areas first
L421: “creditability”: do you mean “credibility”?
L447: the total violation days still decrease -> the total number of violation days still decreases
L497: “stockholders”: is this the correct word? Or do you mean “stakeholders”?
L522-523: “the data required for the model diagnose such as long-term historical area time series might not..”: do you mean: ““the data required for model diagnostics and calibration, such as long-term historical area time series, might not..”?
L551: by a detailed interview with decision makers -> by detailed interviews with decision makers
L555: from single preceding factor -> from a single preceding factor
L581: confirm -> confirms
L587: its -> their
L591: … reservoir as different type of agents -> .. reservoir as agents
L592: agent -> agents

Dear authors,

Thank you for carefully addressing the final touches. I now recommend the paper to be published in HESS.

Pieter van der Zaag