Modeling the high-resolution dynamic  exposure to flooding in a city region

Zhu, Xuehong; Dai, Qiang; Han, Dawei; Zhuo, Lu; Zhu, Shaonan; Zhang, Shuliang

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-3353-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-3353-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-3353-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 8

Research article

|

14 Aug 2019

Research article |

| 14 Aug 2019

Modeling the high-resolution dynamic exposure to flooding in a city region

Xuehong Zhu, Qiang Dai, Dawei Han, Lu Zhuo, Shaonan Zhu, and Shuliang Zhang

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Aug 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 19 Dec 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Jan 2019
- AC1: 'Response to RC1', Qiang Dai, 12 Feb 2019
- AC3: 'Response to RC1', Qiang Dai, 12 Feb 2019
RC2: 'Comments on Manuscript “Modelling the high-resolution dynamic exposure to flood in city-region”', Yue-Ping Xu, 27 Jan 2019
- AC2: 'Response to RC2', Qiang Dai, 12 Feb 2019
AC4: 'Revised manuscript for reviewers 1 and 2', Qiang Dai, 12 Feb 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (18 Feb 2019) by Xing Yuan

AR by Qiang Dai on behalf of the Authors (19 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Mar 2019) by Xing Yuan

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (25 Apr 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript presents using LISFLOOD-FP model and an agent-based model to study the flood exposure under different scenarios in Lishui. The summarized conclusion is drawn that for the study area: 1) there is spatiotemporal variations in urban flooding and population distribution; 2) the exposure increased with increasing rainfall and flooding severity; 3) urban area near the river is more risk for the floods; 4) the impacts of flooding on roads were greater than those on the population and buildings. However, the results are above are within common sense. The paper failed to make any insight that contribute to the advance of the hydrology.

I suggest rejection after reviewing the paper. The reasons as given as follows: 1. simply application of the existing models in one city without giving hydrological insight. 2. draw general conclusion which could even be obtained without carrying out study, quantified results are seriously missing in the study.3 lack of important details on how the questionnaire survey is carried out and missing discussions on errors of survey. 4. the division of the agents are objective. 5. did not come up with a control experiment. Netherless one of the goals of the study is to make improvement of modeling.

There are some comments:
Please specify the time step of hydrological data in table 1. It is mentioned that the rainfall data were used in the study, but it is not shown in table 1. Please list all the data with necessary description.
Please justify the reliability of the sampling. “distribution of the above social characteristics was close to the actual population distribution in the study area.” “Close” is a vague word to describe the representativity of the samples. Since a questionnaire survey is used to randomly select the samples, how and where the sampling is carried out? Is there any nonresponse bias in the survey? Is the sampling size large enough to cover the target groups and represent population, and how do you consider the sampling error? How did you decide the size of sampling and what is the confidence intervals? Obviously, the result of taking sampling size of 5000 is different from that of 500.
In the 3.1 flood model description, please illustrate the input and output of the model.
3.4 did you also established the activity pattern for other agent types or just for employed male with high education?
3.5 line 4 disaster-hit could be more suitable here.
3.5 line 8 “among these” what do you mean by these.
3.5 line 16 should be “considered as”
4.1 the first paragraph of model implementation and parameter setting described the analyze tools and relative information, 4.1.1 obtained blocks, 4.1.2 dividing the agents and 4.1.3 set the threshold are more like the description of method and preparation for the study but not result. I suggest 4.1 go to method section. So the results section begin with the flood simulation.
4.1.1 if others indicate rivers, could you replace others with rivers in the text and figures?
Could you make it clear how did you conclude that water depth was the main factor that caused life and property losses from Figure 9 and 10.
What does the number in the expression such as “block 6” represent?
There are abbreviations like Fig., but there are Figure as well. Please unify them.
We can see the difference between simulated and observed floods from Figure 11. There are overestimation for pluvial flood and underestimation for fluvial flood from the model. Could you quantify the bias?
4.3 line 15 What do you mean by “several people”?
4.3 line 18 did you define the homeless people as one of the many types in advance?
We can see that there are bias from the flood simulation and population distribution simulation. But the bias is not quantified in the study. “both the simulated and measured values were essentially similar with regard to changes in their trends” How was the trend estimated? How similar are they? Since the study is based on simulation using models, the quantified validation of the model performance is necessary. Thorough discussion on the effects of those errors on the conclusion should be added.
4.4 Why the daily scenario is with even higher population exposure than bad weather scenario.
“the government departments can carry out disaster prevention and mitigation measures for areas with high 10 population exposure, such as evacuation prior to the disaster and initiation of key rescue operations during the disaster.” It is of common sense. Specific vulnerable areas and groups of people could be pointed out in the study.
“The method proposed in this study can help to determine vulnerable populations and road users in the exposed blocks.” So which type of populations and blocks?
“Because we considered vulnerable people and road users when we constructed the population groups (agents), we could obtain similar information from the results of vulnerable populations and road users in the exposed blocks, such as the exposed population. Such information is of great practical significance.” Delete it. There is not much useful information.
How are the dynamic exposure connected with the agent types for disaster scenarios?
4.4 Conclusion
From line 7 to the end, I think it should be a part of the discussion section.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Apr 2019)

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 May 2019) by Xing Yuan

AR by Qiang Dai on behalf of the Authors (09 Jun 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Jun 2019) by Xing Yuan

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (16 Jul 2019)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Jul 2019) by Xing Yuan

AR by Qiang Dai on behalf of the Authors (23 Jul 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (23 Jul 2019) by Xing Yuan

AR by Qiang Dai on behalf of the Authors (24 Jul 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

Urban flooding exposure is generally investigated with the assumption of stationary disasters and disaster-hit bodies during an event, and thus it cannot satisfy the increasingly elaborate modeling and management of urban floods. In this study, a comprehensive method was proposed to simulate dynamic exposure to urban flooding considering human mobility. Several scenarios, including diverse flooding types and various responses of residents to flooding, were considered.