Social Vulnerability Evaluation of Natural Disasters and Its Spatiotemporal Evolution in Zhejiang Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The paper presents interesting results and methods for the international audience. However, some aspects should be attended before publication. Below, I have listed some comments related to your paper.

* Abstract

- Please, consider revising the ideas in this section to make it concise and appealing to the reader. Only the most relevant aspects should be included.

- I would add a sentence to describe the novel contribution to the field in an international context.

* Introduction

- Line 32- What type of natural disasters?

- Line 65- Please consider revising the definition given for sensitivity.  It is confusing to define sensitivity as ‘vulnerability’, which is a component of vulnerability. I would use ‘susceptibility’ instead of ‘vulnerability’.

- Line 97- ‘Limited studies’- Please, give more details about these studies. Why are they limited? They should be cited and the main aspects of these studies added in this section in order to highlight the contribution of your paper.

- Line 100- Please, include the objective of your paper before the ‘Materials and methods’ section.

* Materials and methods

Please, consider reorganizing the content of this section. It is difficult to follow the methodology. Give more details about the terms included in Figure 1 (e.g. ‘Demand Analysis’, ‘Frequency analysis’...).

- Line 104- What do you mean by ‘Critical common indicators’?

- Lines 143-144- Please, justify the selection of the HOP method.

- Line 183- Please justify why ‘women are mentally more fragile’.

- Line 265 –These are methods.

The methods and data used for the analysis of the temporal evolution of vulnerability should also be described in this section.

* Discussion – Results and discussion are mixed in this section.

* Conclusions

I would suggest to state more clearly the contribution and importance of your work at the international level.

*References

- Please, consider revising this section according to the guidelines.

* Figures

Figures are of poor quality. I would suggest to improve the resolution of these figures. In Figure 1, the words should not be splitted in two lines. The Font of Figure 2 is not readable, it is quite small.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents a study designed to assess the social vulnerability to natural disasters and its spatiotemporal evolution in Zhejiang Province, China. The topic is worthy of research and the effort to collect the data is recognized. The work is in general well introduced, the problem under study is clear, and the research methodology is reasonable. However, the structure of the manuscript is not as evident, and the methods could be described in more detail. The results obtained are interesting, but so clearly presented and explained. The conclusions can also be improved.

A major comment is that the social vulnerability to natural disasters is assessed considering a holistic approach that aggregates all types of hazards based on general geographic and demographic data. As different risks, for example floods and earthquakes, are very different phenomena in their aspects, better argumentation and discussion are needed about the implications and possible deviations in using that holistic approach.

Beyond this major issue, some minor specific comments are provided below.

 

1. The title of the manuscript is not appropriate, as it is not dealing with the ‘spatiotemporal evolution of natural disasters’. Please correct.

2. Avoid writing in the first person (we). Monetary values are in yuan; please provide them also in UD dollars or Euros.

3. Sections 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 are too abbreviated. Please provide more details on methods, for example, in 2.4 five social vulnerability levels are referred to, but thresholds are not provided.

4. Section 3: Lines 172-173: ‘On the other hand’ is used two times consecutively. Avoid it.

5. Line 185: ‘Unemployed people are a weak link in economic recovery and a destabilizing factor in natural disasters, which can lead to increased social vulnerability to natural disasters’. Please justify or provide evidence.

6. Table 2: It is unclear how the Frequency values were computed and how they should be interpreted. This section could be better illustrated, also using graphs instead of just tables.

7. Line 211: ‘The collinearity analysis of the indicator system shows that most coefficients of correlation between the secondary indicators are less than 0.8, indicating no collinearity between the indicators…’. Where are these correlation coefficients obtained from?

8. Section 4.1: How was the average vulnerability percentage of 36.7% obtained? There is no cross reference to Table 4. The social vulnerability index values in this table are not so easy to scale for comparison. Threshold values could be defined, for example.

9. Lines 234-235: ‘Hence, more resources must be invested in disaster prevention and mitigation, resulting in increased social vulnerability to natural disasters’. It is ‘increased’ or ‘decreased’? Please correct or improve writing. Line 242: ‘The sensitivity’ of what?

10. Section 4.2: Graphs in Figure 2 are low quality. Line 279: It is said that ‘Lishui and Quzhou municipal areas have more mountains and fewer plains than the others, resulting in a higher probability of being attacked by natural disasters’. Explain the rationale for this, i.e., why the probability of natural disasters is higher. In fact, this is somewhat explained later in the paper.

11. Line 321: Stating that ‘the social vulnerability to natural disasters is lower in the cities of Hangzhou and Ningbo than in the other cities’ is redundant because it was said in line 302.

12. The structure of Section 5 is not so clear and needs to be improved. In Subsection 5.1 Conclusions, the main outcomes of the study should be highlighted; there is also discussion and even recommendations for actions, so the subsection heading needs to be reconsidered.

13. Line 365: ‘the proportion of primary industry to GDP should be reduced by adjusting the industrial structure to lower the regional sensitivity to disasters’. This is not so easy to do. Discuss how this needs to be addressed jointly with local authorities.

 

14. Other refs. could be added, e.g., Lloyd S. et al. (2022) Social vulnerability to natural hazards in the Philippines; Raduszynsk T., Numada M. (2023) Measure and spatial identification of social vulnerability, exposure and risk to natural hazards in Japan using open data.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

 

I think that your manuscript entitled  “ Social Vulnerability Evaluation and Spatiotemporal Evolution of Natural Disasters in Zhejiang Province, China” is systematic and scientifically interesting, as well as brings new and valuable ideas and results. This work is interesting from a both scientific and practical point of view, it is also tidy, hence it is suitable for publication in Sustainability in the present state.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Sincerely yours

 

Reviewer

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper constructs an index system for evaluating the social vulnerability of natural disasters in Zhejiang Province, and analyzes the spatial and temporal evolution of the social vulnerability of natural disasters in Zhejiang Province from 2011 to 2020 from three aspects, taking 11 prefecture-level cities in Zhejiang Province as the research objects. The evaluation of the social vulnerability of natural disasters in Zhejiang Province provides a certain scientific basis for disaster prevention and mitigation and risk management, however, the paper contains some minor flaws that need to be corrected before publication.

(1) It is suggested that a summary sentence be added at the end of the abstract section.

(2) The introduction of some methods and models is relatively simple, with no specific process and lack of theoretical support, such as entropy value method and HOP model, etc. Please provide additional information.

(3) In the proposed indicator system for assessing the vulnerability of society to natural disasters, the applicability analysis is mentioned in the research framework diagram of this paper, but it is not introduced in the materials and methods, so please add it.

(4) The research flow chart of this paper does not correspond to the content of the article, such as the spatial and temporal evolution of vulnerability, the flow chart is first spatial characteristics, and the discussion is first temporal characteristics, etc. And some of the arrows refer to the logic of the problem, whether it is the assessment of the vulnerability of society to natural disasters illustrates the indicator system method, or the use of the indicator system to solve the problem, the direction is confusing, please revise.

(5) The Materials and Methods section does not go into enough detail, e.g. (the description of the entropy method in section 2.2 is inadequate and does not describe the concept of the entropy method clearly; a more detailed description of what the HOP model is and what its benefits are should be given in section 2.3).

(6) In Section 2.5, how is the problem solved for different data type magnitudes? Please add a description.

(7) It is not common to test for covariance with correlation coefficients in section 3.3, and it is generally more common to test for covariance with a variance inflation factor (VIF), so please provide an additional account of this.

(8) The results and discussion section of this paper strengthens the logical conception and reorganizes the generalization, as in lines 179-187, analyzing the sensitivity and again discussing the causes and measures of formation. Reorganization is recommended.

(9)  Explain and justify some of the extreme and inflection point values in Table 4, such as 0.6117 in 2019 to 0.4552 in 2020. why the sudden change? Please discuss and explain.

(10) In Figure 2, the order of labeling the diagrams is explained, and that one pair corresponds to that year, and it is suggested to revise Figure 2.

(11) In section 5.2, the content should be proposed accordingly to the issues raised in the discussion, not in general terms, and changes are suggested.

(12) Three existing problems are mentioned in the introduction of the article and two of them are explained in the discussion section. Please discuss the third issue as appropriate, i.e. evaluate the operability of the indicator system you have constructed. A cross-sectional comparison and discussion of similar studies is possible.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper has been substantially improved, so I recommend its publication.

I have only a comment related to the abstract. In my opinion, the abstract should be more concise to capture the attention of the audience. Therefore, only the most important results and conclusions of the paper should be included. Among them, I think it is important to mention the novel contribution related to the methodologies for social vulnerability assessment in an international context and the importance of this study as the first assessment of social vulnerability to natural disasters conducted in Zhejiang province.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript deals with the evaluation of social vulnerability to natural disasters and its spatiotemporal evolution in Zhejiang Province, China. It has been submitted after a previous review. All raised comments have been considered and now the manuscript gives a clearer description of the work. Specific comments are provided below.

1. Title: It may be “… and its Spatiotemporal Evolution…”; not “it’s”. Indeed, as many additions and changes were made, careful final proofreading should be done.

2. The work addresses natural disasters in general, but some descriptions seem to focus on flood-related events. The generalization to other hazardous events, particularly earthquakes, needs to be clarified.

 

3. The conclusions sound too general. The specific findings of the work must be highlighted.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors made changes in accordance with the reviewer's recommendations. Accept in present form.

Author Response

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