Flood Susceptibility Assessment for Improving the Resilience Capacity of Railway Infrastructure Networks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript (water-3158775) tries to identify the topographic, environmental, and hydrological factors influencing the safety of the railway infrastructure and to use Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) alongside an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to produce flood susceptibility maps in Southern Italy that was heavily affected by a destructive flood. After reading this manuscript, I have some major concerns and comments presented as follows:

- . The study used a relatively simple AHP method to quantify the weights of different factors. The accuracy of weight allocation in this method is still affected by subjective judgment. It may be necessary to combine other objective or quantitative weight determination methods to increase the credibility of the model.

- . When describing the methods, the specific data processing steps, parameter settings and algorithm details are not described in detail. For example, when using the AHP method for weight calculation, only a brief introduction to the process is given, without showing the specific process of expert scoring, the construction of the judgment matrix and the results of the consistency test in detail.

- . The study relied mainly on historical flood-related railway infrastructure damage records and official flood inundation maps for model validation, which may have limitations in coverage and time.

- . Although the study covers the watershed along the railway, it is not clear whether potential flood sources outside the watershed, such as adjacent rivers or water sources, were considered.

- . The literature review section has some timeliness issues. It is recommended that the author further supplement relevant literature in the last two years to reflect the latest progress and cutting-edge nature of the research. Please refer to:

Assessing the scale effect of urban vertical patterns on urban waterlogging: an empirical study in Shenzhen, 2024, 107486

Investigating the Impact of Recent and Future Urbanization on Flooding in an Indian River Catchment. Sustainability. 2024

- . When defining flood influencing factors, this study still lacks in-depth exploration of the dynamic changes of human factors (such as urban development). In particular, when responding to extreme rainfall events, the effectiveness and maintenance of impervious surfaces have a significant impact on the results. Please see the above papers.

- . In terms of result validation, although the results were compared with post-disaster flood-induced infrastructure damage, there was no mention of cross-validation using other independent data, such as historical flood data or remote sensing images.

- . The manuscript does not provide enough analysis and discussion of the results in the results section. For example, the causal mechanism of flood susceptibility in different regions could be further explored, and the specific impact of static and dynamic factors (such as rainfall) on the susceptibility distribution could be analyzed.

- . The conclusion of the manuscript lacks prospects for future research directions and application prospects. It is recommended that the authors put forward the limitations of the research and possible future research directions and application fields in the conclusion.

- . Although potential suggestions for improving railway network resilience are put forward, specific implementation steps and expected effect evaluation are lacking and should be supplemented.

- . The manuscript does not discuss the applicability of this method to other regions or different types of linear transportation infrastructure (such as roads, pipelines). Adding discussion in this regard can improve the application value of the research.

- . According to the iThenticate report, the percent match: 29% is too high.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic of flood risk and its consequences on transport infrastructures is very current also in light of ongoing climate change. The work presents a case study in Italy, for a very important railway line. The main limitations of the proposed methodology have been honestly highlighted by the authors. The methodology used can be exported for other case studies and can offer railway authorities a strategy to intervene in those areas subject to flood risk and identify interventions for the mitigation of the risk itself.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for appreciating the presented research.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have checked the revised manuscript, and found that the authors have significantly enhanced the entire research.