Regional Plan against Coastal Erosion: A Conceptual Model for Sicily
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article presents an interesting case study, framed under the studies dealing with the coastal areas. The article is well written, has sufficient research depth and makes an important contribution to the field, but would need some finer tuning in order to make the research available to a broader audience.
1. The introduction should elaborate more on the importance of the coastal areas, for example in reference to the ecosystem services provided to the human population and their economic value (fish industry etc.) Also, a discussion on their threats (e.g., human pressure) is also important in order to explain why the planning of the coastal areas is important. Finally, the research goals should be stressed out more (i.e., lines 24-27 of the abstract are clearer than the paragraph in lines 123-128; therefore, the paragraph should be rephrased as "the aim of this paper is to...").
2. In order to increase the understanding of the article, section 2 (Geographical framework of Study area) should be renamed "Materials and methods", and include, in addition to the description of the case study (current Geographical framework of Study area) a discussion of the approach used to elaborate the new plan (e.g., participatory planning etc.)
3. The sections "Existing plan" should be renamed "Results" and "Discussion", moving the current content such that the results developed in a synthesis, probably under the form of a table, showing briefly the shortcomings of the current plan and the proposed changes, or comparing the existing and proposed plan after presenting them (in their current form). The section "Discussion" should also draw some planning lessons, which could be used in other coastal regions, underlining in this way the contribution of the article to the field. Perhaps it would be a good idea to stress out more the role of data-based technologies (e.g., remote sensing and GIS) in the planning process, including their advantages.
4. It would be good if the authors could provide some schematics of the conceptual approach to the new plan proposed, e.g. of the "virtuous circle of "bottom–up territory" in relationship to the territorial resilience and public participation (lines 429-430).
5. In order to make the article understandable to a broader audience, a map showing the location of the case study in a European context (e.g., a detailed map of Sicily, followed by one showing the position in Europe, using the "map-in-map" system) would be more than welcome.
Author Response
Dear Editors
Dear Reviewers
Thank you, a lot, to have found interesting our paper, it has been a pleasure to try to improve it following your advices.
Following the first reviewer advices:
- we better defined the socio – ecosystem framework, using published data and "the aim of this paper is to..."
- We changed the names of the section, including the old ones in the more classic new structure.
- We try to stress the learned lesson explaining better the coastal contract and we used better the data about coastal classification, defense works and erosion
- We stressed more about GIS and we added a card showing the basic elements introduced in the GIS layers
- We tried to better explained the virtuous circle of "bottom–up territory"
- We realized a new figure to contextualize Sicily in Europe
About the second Reviewer, we punctually followed their suggestion posted into the paper.
We ignore only the note at the line 195, because also if it was evidently correct, we didn’t want make any reference to local plan. May be this material will be used in the Regional Plan, but form the conceptual point of the view we would like to stress the relation from Municipalities and Regional Government.
We send an external English review the paper.
About figures, other those just added, we prepared these two following two, but we are not sure to be pertinent.
Cordially
GR
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors
I have read the manuscript and I guess it is an interesting work useful to coastal managers and researchers. Overall the quality of English could be improved, I made few changes (notes and in yellow stuff that is not clear) that are not exhaustive (so please have your paper revised by a native English person) and the manuscript is a bit long, especially “Conclusions” could be reduced.
Further, more information regarding specific cases of erosion or whatever else (with photos if required) could be added and, especially, references to justify affirmations made along the text.
I add a few papers of mine, of course it is NOT compulsory to mention all of them...
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Editors
Dear Reviewers
Thank you, a lot, to have found interesting our paper, it has been a pleasure to try to improve it following your advices.
Following the first reviewer advices:
- we better defined the socio – ecosystem framework, using published data and "the aim of this paper is to..."
- We changed the names of the section, including the old ones in the more classic new structure.
- We try to stress the learned lesson explaining better the coastal contract and we used better the data about coastal classification, defense works and erosion
- We stressed more about GIS and we added a card showing the basic elements introduced in the GIS layers
- We tried to better explained the virtuous circle of "bottom–up territory"
- We realized a new figure to contextualize Sicily in Europe
About the second Reviewer, we punctually followed their suggestion posted into the paper.
We ignore only the note at the line 195, because also if it was evidently correct, we didn’t want make any reference to local plan. May be this material will be used in the Regional Plan, but form the conceptual point of the view we would like to stress the relation from Municipalities and Regional Government.
We send an external English review the paper.
About figures, other those just added, we prepared these two following two, but we are not sure to be pertinent.
Cordially
GR
