National Hazards Vulnerability and the Remediation, Restoration and Revitalization of Contaminated Sites—2. RCRA Sites

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper by Summers et al. “National hazards vulnerability and the remediation, restoration and revitalization of contaminated sites – 2. RCRA sites” discussed the RCRA (Resource conservation and recovery act) sites exposure to natural hazards such as tornado, flooding, earthquake. The paper is well written. I have a few concerns.

L88 “normalization”
The distribution of raw exposure values should be included and discussed. A few outliers (real large numbers) can skew the normalization.

L139
Citation of ArcMap is needed.

Figure 2
The bottom contents are hard to see.

Figure 6
For the continental map, maybe use a white background as the number of natural hazard exposures is already color coded.
Need to add subplot label for each panel, a, b, c, d…
Figure 6 bottom right panel, the table is too small.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of National Hazards Vulnerability and the Remediation, Restoration and Revitalization of Contaminated Sites – 2. RCRA Sites

 

General Comments

Vey interesting topic of importance to sustainability. However, there are several issues that require attention before the manuscript can be accepted for publication. MAJOR REVISIONS ARE REQUIRED.

 

Specific Comments

Abstract

The first four sentences in the abstract reflect what we already know about natural hazards in the context of contaminated sites.

What specific gap in our knowledge does this study seek to fill?

What method was used in this study?

What were the major findings/results of the study?

What the practical and policy implications of this manuscript?

 

Introduction

This section is well-written. However, it is unclear why the authors undertook the study. What don’t we know and for which reason you sought to undertake the study?

 

Method

This section is well-written. What are some of the assumptions you made in constructing the multi-hazard vulnerability maps?

 

Results

This section is also well-written

 

Discussion

No study limitations were reported. In most instances, any assumption you make becomes a potential limitation. Assumptions are made about (a) the theory under investigation, (b) the phenomenon under investigation, (c) the instrument, (d) the method, (e) the analysis, (f) the power to find significance, (g) the sample in the study, and (h) the results. Consequently, the authors should discuss the limitations of the study, taking into account sources of potential bias or imprecision.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents a study on the exposure and vulnerability of US communities and territories to cascade effects originated on RCRA sites by natural hazards.

The structure of the article is simple to follow, the data sources made explicit and the results coherent with experimental data and discussed with detail.

The article is expected to interest the journal readers and have a strong impact on scientific and decision-making communities.

 

 

I have only two suggestions for the authors:

Please verify the title (National Hazard Vulnerability could have been written in place of Natural Hazard Vulnerability... both are coherent with the content of the article);

On table 2, you report only 6 hazards of the 12 studied (and you also refer to one that is missing). Please integrate the table with missing data.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf