A Risk-Informed Decision-Making Framework for Climate Change Adaptation through Robust Land Use and Irrigation Planning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I reviewed your work called "Risk-Informed Decision-making Framework for Climate Change Adaptation through Robust Land Use and Irrigation Planning".

In this study, there is a theoretical proposal that proposes a model through robust land use and irrigation planning in the face of climate change.

In this context, three decision-making approaches in planning land use are presented:

1) in situations of the two-stage anticipative and adaptive decision-making in the presence of uncertainty,

2) in the case of perfect information,

3) in the case of full “uncertainty”.

The study is interesting because it contains a current and global issue, this topic will maintain its popularity in the future, and the results are needed by many segments of society.

The study is original in that global warming has the potential to continue both in the oceans and on the land, global warming in some parts of the world as drought and famine, in some parts of the world an increase in the number of extraordinary natural disasters and threatening humanity. Because this new normal will directly affect the consumption habits and agricultural production patterns of people around the world. Naturally, scientists from different disciplines need to cooperate in a solution-oriented manner.

The study is well-written and can be read easily.

The discussion part of the study can be enriched in the context of the above-mentioned issues.

Thank you to all the authors for your work.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, we thank you for high evaluation of our work!

We introduced additional discussion about climate changes as follows:

“Climate changes affect socio-economic and environmental systems directly and indirectly, through exogenous shocks from natural disasters and endogenous systemic risks due to interactions among systems and policies [1-6]. Climate changes manifest in alteration of seasonal precipitation and temperature patters, intensification of natural disasters, sea level rise, etc. The impacts of climate changes are expected to increase catalyzed by the growing complexity of systemic interdependencies, introduction of new policies and technologies, growing demands, increasing frequency and severity of floods, hurricanes, storms, droughts, landslides, prolonged heatwaves. Climate changes put stress on water availability and quality, affect agricultural production, energy usage and production, thereby threatening the water-food-energy security. Economic assessment models involved in climate change analysis and impacts assessment are primarily deterministic based on common utility-maximizing principles [7-9]. They are not able to properly account for uncertainties, increasing variability and frequency of extreme events, and catastrophic risks, inherent to climate changes [7-10]. Although climate change modelers recognize that the impacts will be caused by extreme events along with changes in patterns of variability, the ways to represent these variables in climate change assessment models are very limited [9, 10].”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find my comments attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Point-by-point answers to reviewer:

Dear Reviewer, we thank you for comments and improvements to our manuscript, which gained additional clarity and value.

We addressed your comments and suggestions in the following way:

Comment: Repetative sentences/sentences with similar meaning are used in many places. The word “robust” are often used, however, it is a subjective term which is better not to use always.

 

Answer: In the paper we explain the meaning of “robust” decisions as we introduce them in our work. In particular, we write: “The robustness of the two-stage decisions is achieved with respect to quantile-based performance indicators and constraints, feasible decisions, and uncertainties [16-18]. The approach enables to deal with imbalances, thresholds, and safety constraints, emerging in nonsmooth, possibly discontinuous and nonconvex, interacting anthropogenic and natural systems. A robust combination of interdependent anticipative and adaptive measures reduces the chances of critical imbalances and exceedances of vital thresholds, which otherwise could lead to systemic failures [1], [19-20].

We refer to the paper by Ermoliev and Hordijk discussing various facets/criteria of robustness: Ermoliev, Y., Hordijk, L. Global Changes: Facets of Robust Decisions. In Coping with Uncertainty, Modeling and Policy Issues; Marti K., Ermoliev Y., Makowski M., Pflug G., Eds.; Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 2006; pp. 4-28.”

Comment: L44: “…primarily deterministic” - I would expect the authors mention some prevous deterministic models and briefly talk about those.

Answer: We introduced additional references to IAMs:

 

We included a short clarification as follows (More detailed discussion is beyond the topic of this paper): “… Economic assessment models involved in climate change analysis and impacts assessment are primarily deterministic based on common utility-maximizing principles [7-9]. They are not able to properly account for uncertainties, increasing variability and frequency of extreme events, and catastrophic risks, inherent to climate changes [7-10]. Although climate change modelers recognize that the impacts will be caused by extreme events along with changes in patterns of variability, the ways to represent these variables in climate change assessment models are very limited [9, 10].”

 

Comment: L76-78: Please provide references.

 

Answer: We provide the following additional references.

Chapman, D., Khanna, N. Crying no wolf: Why Economists Don’t worry about climate change, and should. Clim. Change 2000, 47, 225–232.

 

Comment: L79-83: Please provide references.

 

Answer: We provide additional references:

Chapman, D., Khanna, N. Crying no wolf: Why Economists Don’t worry about climate change, and should. Clim. Change 2000, 47, 225–232.

 

 

Comment: L86-93: Repetative statements.

The sentence has been revised

 

Comment: L104-106: Repetative statements.

The sentence has been revised

 

Comment: L107: “EU” – elaborate it firstly for the ease of general reader.

Answer: We revised as follows: “… EU CAP (European Union Common Agricultural Policies) ….”

 

Onward from Introduction

Comment: In eq. 1, what does “E” mean?

Answer: We gave the following explanation:
“… where  defines mathematical expectation of the stochastic variable …”

 

Comment: L153: Did you mean “Constraints in eq. (2)”? If yes, please correct similar cases throughout the manuscript.

Answer: The sentence has been revised as well as similar cases throughout the manuscript.

 

Comment: L536: “paper” – better to say “study”

Answer: Thank you, we now say “study”

 

Comment: I would expect the authors discuss more clearly about the limitation of the proposed two-stage STO model and future research direction/improvement

Answer: In Conclusions we added the following sentence on further possible extension of the approach: “The proposed two-stage STO model can be further extended to dynamic version with rolling time horizons and "stopping time” events, which have strong connections with dynamic versions of CVaR risk measures and endogenous discounting [1, 46].”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx