Modular Design of Bioretention Systems for Sustainable Stormwater Management under Drivers of Urbanization and Climate Change

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

41: IPCC 2007 is an outdated report. For the same sentence you could cite the most recent IPC report (AR6), presented a few weeks ago.

Figure 1: it would be great if you could increase the resolution of this figure. It is readable, but hardly.

104-111: “(1) To select” instead of “Selection”. Same for (2).

 124-126: maybe split these in two sentences sine now it looks that the rainfall and temperature data are obtained from the CFA generic classification and not from a measured weather database.

152-153: provide references for these methods in the mentioned countries.

208: “climate change” instead of “climate changes”, since the current climate process is already defined with this concept. Same for 541 and 634

211: “have” instead of “has”

227: add reference where RCP (IPCC) scenarios are described.

Figure 4: please increase the resolution of this figure if possible

566: “Liu, Liu and Pyke”

607: recovered water over which time period?

Supplementary Material: please add your paper title and authors in the supplementary material to add a bit of formality.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The work seems to be relevant for the development of strategies to prevent the effects of extreme storms effects in cities. However, the manuscript should be reviewed to solve some issues and turn the content clear.

The references style does not follow the journal rules.

The title is vague because nature-based solutions is a concept with a broad meaning.

The abstract must be rewritten to present a pertinent overview of the work, its background and purpose, the main methods, main findings, and main conclusions. In addition, the use of abbreviations must be avoided when the definitions were used once in the abstract.

I recommend avoiding the use of abbreviations as keywords that are not of common knowledge such as IDF and LID. Is modulation used with the meaning of modelling? On the other hand, runoff and flood risk may be suitable keywords.

As already mentioned, nature-based solutions is a broad concept. I recommend adding in the introduction section a description and examples of that solutions. Moreover, the relevance of these solutions must be focused on the stated issue of soil drainage response to storm events. In addition, the text refers to adaptive drainage structures that require a brief description at least. Finally, the article refers bioretention systems that are not referred to in the introduction.

Please consider increasing the graphic quality of Fig. 1. In addition, I recommend a brief description of the proposed steps. Moreover, most figures in the paper contain graphs with a low resolution which difficult the data analysis.

I suggest adding the reported uncertainty of rainfall and daily temperature in line 126.

Please consider using peak flows minimizing, attenuation, or similar words instead of amortization, which is an accounting concept, in line 145.

I recommend the use of references supporting “Rational Method” and “SNCS-CN method” in lines 160-161. In addition, SNCS must be defined.

I recommend moving table 2 to near line 182 where it is first cited.

Please use curve number or only CN in line 191 because CN is defined previously in the document. The same observation is for C in line 194.

Please explain the use of C(N) in line 201 (and 359). Is it CN?

Please avoid using abbreviations that are only used once, such as PT, MD… (lines 216-218).

Please add reference or references to support the statements in lines 245 to 253.

I recommend the inclusion into the document of more details of the proposed bioretention structure, particularly of the filtering media and soil type.

Please define NSE in line 285.

I recommend adding the details of the laboratory experiments into the supplementary material (lines 283-294).

Please rephrase the sentence in lines 345-346.

Please check the duplication of SS abbreviation in line 349.

Please add the description of numbers and letters in the figure 2 legend.

I recommend that authors include a justification of using different locations (1 and 2) for the different scales SS and NS.

Please check the entire document to avoid repetition of abbreviations definitions, such as C, CN, … in lines 191, 194, and 357-359.

Besides the graphics quality is too low, the chosen “diamond plots” type is not intuitive. The chart data are difficult to analyse turning the document hard to understand by readers without expertise in statistics. Moreover, the charts are not-conventional diamond plots.

Please check/clarify the “modulation design” concept (line 643).

Please define GCMs in line 646.

Please clarify the meaning of “area” in line 651 (The catchment area? The bioretention system area?...)

It is not clear from the results presented the support for the benefits of a retention system for drought issues. Please clarify this support in the work.

Modulation is seldom referred to in the text but its meaning seems to unfit the work carried out.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

 The adaptive nature-based solutions for sustainable stormwater management under drivers of urbanization and climate change is shown in this work. In this work was shown that nature-based solution for urban drainage can contribute to prevent the increase of flood-related hazards (or water security). The incorporate land use and climate change into existing design methods and performed a sensitivity analysis to identify parameters causing most uncertainties was analysed. Are expected to increase in the coming years, increasing the risk for the population, if adaptive measures are not taken. It was established that from an initial planning that incorporates these drivers of change from the design of adaptive measures, it is possible to increase the efficiency of structures and reduce the risks caused by flooding to the population, and even increase the resilience to droughts with simoutanously posiibility of water recuperation. In this study presented a methodology for incorporating the drivers of change from the planning, performed a sensitivity analysis to help identify the main parameters that cause uncertainties in determining the performance of the systems.

The research concept is interesting.
The work is good described.
The references were well matched to the research topic.
Well-formed conclusions.

It is necessarry to:
- increase the size and resolution of some figures e.g. Figure 1 or Figure 4 (which are completely unreadable).

It should be good to:
-  increase resolution of all figures to make the measurement results and scheme in methodology easier to read by the readers,
- analyze the abstract and conclusions.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no further comments. I acknowledge the efforts of the authors to improve the manuscript.