Effective Management of Scarce Water Resources: From Antiquity to Today and into the Future
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This work presented a comprehensive review of water resource management in cities across world history. An analysis was performed to study the management strategies to identify key elements of effective water resource management in short-term and long-term water scarcity based on government documentation and databases, with a focus on Europe. There are few improvements that can be made to make the manuscript more concise with increased clarity.
- The methodology was not clearly laid out. In section 3, the authors mentioned the Sustainable Water Index (Arcadis) and the application of the Blue City Index for Melbourne and Amsterdam. However, the relationship between the prior work and this study (model development) was not explicitly provided.
- Please provide a description of the Sustainable Water Index (Arcadis) and Blue City Index.
- If the main objective of this study is to develop a model, please describe the model structure, criteria, parameters, and the approaches /flow for the model developed at the beginning of section 3. A flow chart that depicts the process flow of the model development would be helpful. This area is a key part that is missing, a major gap in the manuscript.
- Results section (4) is very loosely organized and lengthy. Some of them seem redundant. Is there a way to arrange by category/parameters, not by country? A concise, more organized presentation will lead readers to the model (Figure 1).
- Are there conclusions from the work? The end of the manuscript seems to be cut off /incomplete.
- Section 2.3. “Claim that the collapse of ancient civilizations from a lack of water” seems too simplified. Lack of water could be one of the contributing factors leading to the collapse of civilization, but not the sole factor.
- Lines 53-54 “ Declining rainfall”. Climate change is complex, it is changes in the frequency and intensity of rainfalls. It could be increasing rainfalls in one region and delining rainfalls in another region.
- Lines 62-63. “Global warming and climate change”. As we all know that global warming is a major cause of current climate change, according to IPCC. They are not two separate issues.
- Line 258 “1954-1955” for the Mycenean period? Check.
- Of the seven cities studied, six are European cities. Why would Sidney be included in the study if the work centers on Europe?
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
- It's suggested to use the recent references.
- The contents would be enriched in terms of organization/literature review
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript is highly unclear. It starts by describing general problems of climate change, then turns to water scarcity, then makes an unclear selection of some cities that mostly have water abundance problems rather than water scarcity, then gives a comparative analysis of a range of factors that come out of the blue, and then suddenly presents a framework that is not further explained. The conclusion seems to be that all problems can be solved by developing an information system. Meanwhile the reader is continuously confused. Also, the authors seem to have little understanding of water management.
As the manuscript is not structured, the assumptions and choices are not clear and the discussion is hardly related to the preceding text, the potential scientific value can not be determined. A thorough rewriting of the manuscript is needed to make it understandable and scientifically interesting.
The introduction is based on only 4 references, 3 of which are not in English, and is also hardly relevant for the final discussion.
Section 2 is not relevant for the rest of the manuscript.
To mention a few (of many) confusing points in the manuscript:
line 23: prediction in water management is generally done through modeling. Machine learning to my understanding is part of artificial intelligence. The manuscript must explain how and why these terms are used in conjunction.
line 85; The Smart City concept is an important element but is not further explained in the manuscript. As the reference is in Slovak language, many readers will not be able to learn more about the concept.
line 180: "Ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations maintained integrated cooperative relationships with each other in the export and import of timber, the sharing of artworks, tools, and precious metals or hydro-technologies, such as [9]". It is highly unclear how this sentence is related to the listing that follows.
line 224: "Egyptian technologies were simple and highly efficient, Greek technologies did not require a living process of complex control." This is not explained in the manuscript and only posed here.
line 226: "While the managerial and technological aspects of water resource management from the Egyptian territory are still used today, the Greek ones meet the conditions of sustainability also for the cities of the future." This is not explained in the manuscript and only posed here.
line 235: "The scarcity of water contributed to several years of drought". In general, drought leads to water scarcity, not the other way round.
line 343: Water Index from Arcadis: where is it described (reference) and what elements are used for the analysis?
line 368: "Instead, the cities on ranks 8. (Sydney) and 9. Birmingham." What does this mean?
line 369: the selection of cities includes 6 cities in Northwest Europe and Sydney. How is Sydney comparable to the other 6 and why is Toronto excluded, while it would be better comparable. Also, the introduction has been about water scarcity and most of the cities are more concerned with floods.
line 440: drop in sea levels is not relevant for Rotterdam.
line 443: floating pavilions are not a water storage measure.
line 936: where do the elements under the column Prvok (?) come from?
line 939: "The overwhelming majority of the cities analysed". With 7 cities analyses, the term 'overwhelming majority' is rather out of place.
line 939: "i.e. 71% for water storage". How is it possible to come to 71% with 7 cities?
line 983: "Nevertheless, both of these civilizations are among the best water management practices since antiquity." Who says so?
line 988: "The authors argue that the main cause of the decline of ancient civilizations was not the scarcity of water resources, but the ineffective response of strategic management to ecological change." This is the first time this is mentioned and not further substantiated.
line 1003: "The view is supported by the fact from Section 2". No it is not.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript collects and describes a wide range of information. The authors presumably have a lot of ideas in their heads but fail to convey these to the reader. The manuscript has improved somewhat relative to the first version, but it is still highly unclear what the scientific value of the manuscript is. I have stopped reading after 3.1 as I still wasn't able to understand what messages the authors wanted to bring to the reader.
If the authors consider resubmitting the manuscript, I recommend they essentially rewrite the manuscript based on the following steps:
- what is the problem and what is our focus?
- what did we research?
- what choices did we make in this research, e.g. choice of cases?
- what were the outcomes?
- what can we conclude from that?
For every line: is the information in this line necessary to understand or underpin the story we are telling?
Some more details:
The introduction does not lead the reader to understand what the manuscript is about. A lot of examples are mentioned, much of which are not directly relevant for cities, which appears to be the scope of the manuscript. The introduction should describe only those climate change elements that are directly relevant for the manuscript and introduce that the authors will argue that ancient methods and tools are relevant and should be reintroduced.
I would also expect some explanation why the authors consider ancient climate relevant for current and future climate change circumstances.
It is not explained why Egypt Mesopotamia and Greece are discussed other than that they can be considered as best practice, which is no criterion.
2.3 is a lengthy description of different civilizations that are considered to have collapsed as a result of water scarcity. Since it still is not clear what the manuscript is about, all the details described cannot be linked to why they are described. For the sake of the argumentation, I think a mere mentioning would suffice.
2.4 is not really a summary of knowledge from antiquity as many lessons learned are known without any knowledge of the past, have not been underpinned earlier in the text and still have an unclear connection to their purpose.
3.1 is a clear process description, but it is still not clear what the purpose of the own model will be.
Line 8: 'The best practice of effective water management comes from ancient civilizations' - the manuscript is not very clear why this would be true, please provide evidence for this.
Line 19: it is not the ecological change that causes pressure, but the meteorological changes caused by GHGs
line 55: Amsterdam is not threatened by a drop in sea levels, but a rise
line 124: 'Two types of sites or cities can be considered as best practice' - why are these two chosen as best practice? Please explain.
line 200: 'the Greek ones meet the conditions of sustainability also for 200 the cities of the future' - why is that? Please explain.
line 202: 'A popular tool for lifting water was the so-called elevator, the shadouf, which had an arm with a bucket that moved based on the strength of the human operator. The device was able to lift water up to 1.5 meters and irrigate 0.12 hectares of agricultural land in 12 hours' - why does the reader need to know this? Also it does not seem to do much for irrigation, only on a very small scale.
line 323: 'Water systems from Egypt and Greece serve as a model for current and future smart cities in the field of integrated water management' - why do they serve as models?
line 325: 'Retrospective problem solving based on ancient best practices is an effective management approach.' - this may be true for the time that they were inlace, but is it still valid nowadays? Please explain?
line 326: 'Based on the negative trend of decreasing water quantity, current and future cities need to develop sustainable systems for managing these limited resources.' - this does not follow from antiquity.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
