Learning from Floods—How a Community Develops Future Resilience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

Learning from floods – How a community develops future resilience

This manuscript focuses on understanding resilience initiatives in an area extremely prone to flooding, New Zealand Northland community. This topic is extremely important as climate change continues to threaten communities worldwide. The authors used good information for analyzing resilience and found among other results that community connection, self-protection trainings among residents, and catchment management were important factors for improving resilience to future flood events.

There are several issues with the manuscript that need to be addressed for it to reach its full potential. I detailed these issues below.

Abstract

·         The methodology should be described in a bit more detail. For example, the authors should mention the survey and secondary sources of information used.

·         There are a few grammatical and typographical errors in the abstract.

Introduction

·         The authors should define what resilience is.

·         Before talking about the challenges of flood in New Zealand, the authors should recognize the impacts of floods globally.

·         The authors should introduce a sentence at the end of the introduction that gives the reader an outline of the rest of the manuscript.

Background Literature

·         The authors should include a citation at the end of this sentence: “However, implementation remains challenging to achieve.” (Line 67)

·         The authors should explain what they mean by “compensation”. (Line 101)

·         The authors should define response and recovery.

Research Methods

·         This section needs additional information to understand how the research was conducted. How many interviews were conducted? Who were those interviewed? What types of questions were asked? Same questions pertain to the surveys. Additional questions for the surveys include the following. What was the response rate? How was the survey administered?

Result and Discussion

·         The authors should justify why they focused on concepts that relate to resilience, such as volunteers and working together after flood.

·         The following are not clear:

“Nevertheless, there are sometimes either resisting to stay or not following the instruction to evacuate during an emergency…” (Lines 231-232)

“Such plans also provided decision-making for emergency response…” (Line 246)

·         The authors should explain what is meant by “adaptive capacity”. (Line 346)

·         The numbering for this section should be 4 not 3.

·         Spell out acronyms the first time they are used (e.g., CDEM, LIDAR).

Conclusion

·         The authors should discuss the limitations of the study, such as the use of snowball sampling technique and the limited generalizability of their findings.

·         The entire manuscript needs a thorough editing. There are many typographical and grammatical errors.

Author Response

Thank you for the reviewer's comments. Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the reviewer's comments. Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript ID: water-1918515
Title: Learning from floods – How a community develops future resilience
OVERVIEW
The study aims to understand how Northland's community reacts when flooding occurs, and how it deals more generally with natural disasters and climate change.
GENERAL COMMENTS
The subject matter is actual, interesting and within the scope of the Journal Water.
The manuscript complies with the journal template and is well structured.
The title describes the manuscript and is appropriate.
The English spelling and grammar could be improved.
As for the rest, I have one small suggestion. Please read the specific comments.
In conclusion, I believe this manuscript is interesting and worthy of publication after minor changes.
SPECIFIC COMMENTS
Table 1: From 2011 to 2022 (in 12 years) there are 9 events with a return period equal to or higher than 100 years. Please refer to the validity of the IDF curve that was applied in the analysis.  

Author Response

Thank you for the reviewer's comments. Please see the attachments

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have introduced numerous corrections that I have suggested, for which I am grateful.
Some of them were ignored, for example the lack of description for Figure 1. Despite adding a photo, it is still unknown what is actually shown there.

Despite the uniqueness of the described local community, I missed any reference to other groups or places. Without this, it is difficult to evaluate the conclusions presented and the possibility of using them elsewhere.

It is hard for me to understand and agree with some of the sentences related to quantitative hydrology.
If I were to rate the manuscript as a quantitative description, my judgment would be negative.
The authors describe socio-sociological issues well, but engineering issues require deep thought, redrafting or even removing certain sentences. This will benefit the overall reception.
Table 1 is a good example.
How is it to be understood that its content is the work of the authors (source: author)? Have the authors actually counted these reported probabilities, or are they citing them from other sources?
The sentence that raised my doubts is still completely incomprehensible (verses 41-43). A sentence has been added after it, which makes it even more difficult to understand: "This is higher than expected typical river flows for the month, generally between 40-60 th percentiles."
In conclusion, removing incorrectly worded sentences about hydrological extremes will make the text more understandable.

The first sentence in the summary should refer directly to the research area, because this conclusion is not universal.

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for the constructive suggestions. The authors will address the reviewer's comments in detail:

1. The authors provide an explanation of figure 1 as an addition in lines 39-40
   "As seen in figure 1, the flooded area is confined between two hills, creating no outlet for high water to escape. "
2. The authors provide a paragraph about the use of cultural knowledge in Indonesia's indigenous people (Dayak tribe from Borneo) that has similar value to the Maori community in New Zealand. Lines 446-458
3. The study is qualitative research, and the author uses no quantitative analysis in the research. The authors do not specify and do not focus on quantitative hydrology and engineering issues in this study. Regarding to table 1, the authors decided to remove table 1 as the recurring flood explained with the example of flood events provided in the introduction paragraph 2. The authors give a sentence about the reason for recurring floods in the northland to highlight its importance in lines 41-42.
4. Regarding the mentioned sentences, during the 2020 event in July, river flows were 200-400% above normal in many rivers along the region's east coast, with the remaining catchments at 100-200% compared to long-term averages during a normal situation of 40-60%. A map showing the river flow data area and areas with higher river flow is provided in figure 2. The sentences about the river flow percentile are rewritten to make them more understandable to the reader in lines 42-45
5. In the conclusion, the Authors make the first sentence refer to the study area. Line 470: "Northland communities on flood plains...."

Thank you,

Authors