Flood Modeling in a Coastal Town in Northern Colombia: Comparing MODCEL vs. IBER
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The papers used two models MODCEL and IBER to simulate flooding of coastal town in Northern Colombia.
My main comments are as follows:
1- The paper deals with application of these two models to simulate flooding of the study area.
The authors need to highlight what has been added to the literature in their work, in addition
to just using these models and preparing their layout for simulation.
2- Using only one event for calibration and one event for validation can be of a concern.
Variability can be high from one event to another, and usually one should use several events
either for calibration or validation.
3- Line 49 "The former class": Do you mean the 1D? If this is the case, River2D and HEC-RAS 2D
should not belong to this class!!
4- Line 144 "reliably be determined": Not necessarily, unless observed data is available
to calibrate the parameters, which is not usually the case!!
5- Lines 146-147 "correct flows and volume values":Do you have observed data for each
sub-region to judge its correct flows and volume?
6- Line 247 Table 1: How come fo is < fc?
it is not clear which are starting values and which are optimised values?
Also, 15 mm/hr is very high infiltrate rate, especially for fc,
this is highly unexpected for infiltration rate!!
7- Line 261 "identified in MODCEL": Do you need a model to identify the severity of an event?
Is there observed data, for rainfalls and flows which can identify the severity of the event?
8- Line 271 " according to the results obtained in MODCEL": This result is based on the model,
which might not be the actual case. Is there any observed data to support this?
9- Line 277 "orifice type structures": This result is based on the model, which might not be
the actual case. Is there any observed data to support this?
10- Line 280 "these outlets as weirs": Equations for flow over a weir are different from
those for the flow through a culvert!!
11- Line 338: "0.01 m": Is this 10 mm of water depth? 5 mm of water can make a surface wet,
especially for urban areas
12- Line 354 "a return time of 84 years from which the hyetogram (mm/h) is obtained":
How did you determine/calculate this return period?
Do you have only daily data? and thus you had to derive the hyetograph or the
hourly rainfall data for the event?
13- Line 360 "from which the hyetogram (mm/h) is obtained": Again, how this hyetogram was obtained?
Note that the temporal distribution of the event will have significant impact on the flows
14- Line 363 " runoff coefficient associated": Runoff coeffficient also significantly depends
on the slope!!
15- Line 375 " number of parameters available for modification": Too many paramters,
which can make it hard for any optimisation technique to achieve the global minimum. comment
15- Line 424 "20% ..", Based on what 20% was chosen?
16- Line 431 "changing parameters by hand": This can be hard with so many parameters,
and many scenarios can produce similar results, and definitely will not guarantee
to achieve the global minimum for the objective function. comment
17- Line 465 Table 4: What was the average depth of water (in meters) in the center
of the cells? Do you have any measurements for the flow rates as well?
Add a column for this.
18- Line 559 "find out their strengths": But this will be a function of the layout of
these models. Each user can have a different layout, or even the same user can
have different layout for the same area under study!! In addition, the large number
of model's parameters, their selected initial values and in turn their optimised
values can have significant impact!!
19- Line 566 " 0.062 to 0.197 and for IBER from 0.301 to 0.39": What is the average
observed water depth for this case?
20- Line 624 "adequately": This is arguable. Also, there was only on event for
calibration and one event for validation. Variability between events is high,
and it is recommended to have several events for the calibration and validation.
21- Line 632-633 "modeling the flow in the storm and sewage underground networks ..":
Do you have observed data for these to validate/check the reliability of the modelled values?
22- There are few typing/editing errors, which are shown in the attached "reviewed" version.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is interesting and in full scope with the considered special issue. It is the application of well-established numerical methods to real floods.
The manuscript is almost mature for the publication nd needs only a minor revision, based on the following points:
1. The Authors are requested to illustrate the difference between transport and tank cells by adding the corresponding equations.
2. As the model is (rows 118-121):
...therefore a composition of zero-dimensional elements (tank type cells), of mono-dimensional ones (e.g. the cells that compose a channel are 1D) and of equations that express the laws of water inter-change (e.g., a weir, or the flow through an orifice).
The Authors are requested why they did not consider, in particular cases, cells with 2D shallow water equations, for example when there is not a prevailing direction within the cell.
3. Have the characteristic of the soil (infiltration parameters, roughness, etc.) been calibrated or simply estimated once for all ?
4. Does the proposed method account for the flow regime? I mean can it manage transcritical flows at the boundaries and the corresponding change on boundary conditions?
5. The Authors state (rows 609-612):
On the contrary, a serious difficulty in IBER, also common in other 2D models, is encountered when special flow communication between cells has to be introduced, and in some cases, despite multiple efforts to introduce an adequate interconnection, unavoidably one cannot get to satisfactory results.
What does it mean serious difficulty? Instability? Inaccuracy? And on what does it depend this serious difficulty?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1) Write the novelty of this work in 100 words.
2) Write the practical applications of this work in 300 words, before the conclusions.
3) Abstract and conclusions = less than 150 words, one paragrraph.
4) What factors will influence the delivering an integrated plan of solutions? EXPLAIN.
5) Write the advantages and limitations of the MODCEL.
6) What models have been used to solve the problem of urban flooding? Summarize their salient features in the form of a NEW TABLE.
7) One sentence cannot be one paragraph. Several such mistakes can be seen.
8) What particular conceptual or methodological advances have been made so far in the literature? Summarize them in one new paragraph.
9) Improve the discussions with literature reference on the following key aspects of this work:
a) Role of the three infiltration parameters
b) Depressed zone
c) Runoff
d) Box culverts
e) Surface flow canal or a closed conduit
f) Flow rate diagrams
g) Rainfall transformations
h) Wetlands
10) Remove all the BOX type outside border from all the figures.
11) In all the graphs, the text size should be uniform. SOme are VERY SMALL and we cannot read when printed.
12) AVOID using words such as WE, HE, ME. OUR, SHE, I, THEY, etc in your document.
13) A lot of REF formatting errors can be seen. Did the authors rely on some error making reference software? Why cannot the authors format the references MANUALLY?
14) Check the entire document for ENGLISH mistakes. A lot of grammar and sentence structure errors can be seen.
15) All the comments should be INCORPORATED. The authors cannot reply saying that - the reviewers comments are out of scope. REFER to recent literatures and facilitate an IN-DEPTH scientific discussion.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors have responded and fixed most of the issues which were raised in my review. In general, the paper looks publishable now
