Urban Flood Resilience Evaluation Based on GIS and Multi-Source Data: A Case Study of Changchun City
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript addresses a real, contemporary issue, urban flood resilience, which can be encountered in numerous regions of the world.
Please allow me to suggest some improvements to the manuscript.
Because the topic is relevant, both locally and internationally, I would suggest that the authors include a section or subsection on the state of the art, where they can present, in greater detail and with additional bibliographic elements, the most recent publications and studies in the field.
I wonder, aren't the methods used for a study of this scope a bit dated?
For instance, I believe the authors should explain why they chose AHP for their research and not other improved or more recent methods. Other possible solutions can include Fuzzy AHP, which can classify evaluation factors into target level, criterion level, and factor level (whereas AHP can only classify evaluation factors into target level and factor level); or hybrid MCDM approaches, such as a combination AHP/TOPSIS when TOPSIS employs AHP weights, or Cybernetic, Parsimonious, Express Fuzzy AHP/ANP etc. I would also suggest that the authors include Saaty's general AHP structure in an appendix. There is nothing novel about it.
In the case of k-means, an algorithm with a long history, the same current issue may exist. I would suggest that the authors provide an explanation as to why they chose k-means over other improved clustering methods, such as Mean-Shift Clustering, K-Medians, DBSCAN, etc. Subsection 2.3.3 seems extremely short for that matter.
Perhaps it would be of interest to emphasize more clearly towards the end of the manuscript what the authors bring new in comparison to other studies, their scientific contribution to the field under study. It would be interesting to read more in this manuscript about the plans of the authors to improve the current experiment, to continue their research.
I recommend paying more attention to the editing of the manuscript, for example table 1 contains numerous errors of the following type: "Error! No source of reference found ".
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
The paper is interesting, however, I have a couple of suggestions as well as a question for authors.
The introduction of the paper is too extensive and should be shortened. The content of the introduction is also problematic, I believe that it is general and that it should be changed and adapted to the content of the manuscript itself.
In the "Data collection" part of the text, you mention, among others, the precipitation evaluation index. Precipitation is perhaps the most important index when looking at the possibility of flooding in a certain area. It is not clear from your text what is the density of the rainfall data and what period is covered by the rainfall data you used as a rainfall index?
Moreover, an important about methodology is that the validation phase is missing.
The selected indicators, the research methodology, the approach, the obtained results, everything has already been seen and does not bring anything new or unexpected results.
Throughout the text, it is not clear what is new in the scientific sense that this work brings. Unfortunately, I don't see anything new in the scientific or methodological field.
The conclusion is unconvincing and poorly written. I'm not sure if it could have been done better considering that the entire manuscript is of the same character.
Best regards.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Measuring resilience to floods is a challenge for managers and efforts in this area are important.
The paper is well organized and presents an interesting and complete index for measuring flood resilience. The use of too many indicators can make it difficult to reproduce the index in other regions with less information. Being the dependence on a large number of indicators the weak point of the index. Perhaps comparing this index with simpler indices is a way of assessing the need for each indicator.
Some specific points to check:
1 - Using altitude as an indicator makes it difficult to compare different regions. Cities located on highlands can suffer from flooding just as much as cities at sea level.
2- the phrase: "Generally speaking, economically developed areas are more vulnerable to flooding" would not be "In general, economically less developed areas are more vulnerable to flooding"
3- In general the case study (item 2.1) is presented after the methodology (item 2.2).
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The article entitled Urban flood resilience evaluation based on GIS and multi source data: A case study of Changchun City is a multi-author work and, as indicated in the abstract, the research presented in it aims to develop a model for assessing the city's flood resistance, taking into account infrastructure, environmental , society and economy.
Considering the thematic scope of the journal, in my opinion, the authors did not quite accurately match the journal to the subject of research.
My comments:
The abstract is technically well prepared and contains the purpose, description of the research and preliminary results. It introduces the topic and presented research problem well and certainly encourages you to read the article. The research problem described in the abstract is very important and will certainly (based on the abstract) be of interest to a wide group of researchers.
However, as you delve into the next sections of the text (in my opinion), its importance decreases and it moves very far from the interesting goals described in the abstract. In my opinion, the most important complaint is the reference of the research results to a specific location - Changchun City. The authors focused on highlighting the following conclusions: a) The infrastructure and environmental vulnerability in the southern region of Changchun are generally higher than those in the northern region. b) The social and economic recoverability of the southern part of Changchun is generally higher than that of the northern part. c) Except Erdao District, the flood resistance capacity of the northern part of Changchun is generally lower than that of the southern part of Changchun.
The described conclusions clearly indicate the typically project and not scientific nature of the work. In my opinion, the article and, above all, the conclusions drawn from the research must be thoroughly rebuilt. The original research paper should contain conclusions of a general and cognitive nature, which cannot be found in this manuscript. Other less prominent conclusions are very general in nature and do not contribute anything to the development of science. To sum up, the Conclusion section should be shortened (irrelevant information that contributes nothing to science should be omitted), and the authors should focus on drawing broader conclusions from their research. These conclusions should relate to the problem they raise (described in the executive summary) and have and have a greater relationship with the developed tool.
Introduction. The introduction can be divided into 3 independent sections. The first concerns the problem of urban flooding, the second concerns the confirmation of the need to assess the resilience of cities to the problem of flooding, while the third refers to other know methods.
The first section of the introduction focuses on the description of a well-known and frequently discussed problem, i.e. problems of flooding, precipitation and urbanization. This problem has been aptly mentioned, but it is enough that they will be signaled. I suggest limiting this part of the introduction to the essentials. As it stands, duplication of generally known information unnecessarily lengthens the manuscript. In the second section, the reference to Holling's work is aptly indicated. From this part, the presented course of introduction to the subject of the work undertaken does not raise my objections. In the third section, more attention should be focused on the analysis of similar research conducted by other researchers, especially focused on the development of analogous methods/tools.
This may apply to both tools used comprehensively (such as the tool proposed by the authors for the assessment of infrastructure, society, environment, and economy) and "micro-tools" developed by other researchers for the assessment of individual indicators separately.
The material and methods section was well prepared and described. The information contained therein served as a case study and the basis for the development of the methodology. The methodology section itself is acceptable, although I would consider adding a general description of the research methods. In the results, the authors included information about the procedure and the basis of the methodology developed by them. This makes the research reproducible.
The result section in my opinion needs to be rebuilt. The authors focused on the results and related them to the aforementioned location of Changchun City. Of course, the results should be described, but the text should be reformatted and rethought. To be able to draw general conclusions for the developed assessment tools, which is the most important part of the article. The reorganization of the work should be done in such a way that the results are transferable to other research stakeholders. There should be a reference to the global scale and focus primarily on the developed tool, which may bear the hallmarks of a scientific novelty. This can be achieved, for example, by comparing the effects obtained with the use of the developed tool to other techniques used, e.g. in relation to hydrodynamic modeling, which is very time-consuming. Such results would be a significant contribution to the development and acquisition of new knowledge that could be used on a global scale. The literature is rich and contains 44 items, mostly scientific articles. There is no excessive number of self-citations.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
I have read and analyzed your changes and additions in the manuscript. I believe that they influenced in a positive direction and that the paper has the scientific potential to be published.
Best regards.
Reviewer 4 Report
The improvements made to the manuscript greatly improve the scientific resonance of the research.The authors took into account the most important comments regarding the conclusions drawn from the research.
