Historical Floods on the Spanish Mediterranean Basin: A Methodological Proposal for the Classification of Information at High Spatio–Temporal Resolution—AMICME Database (CE 1035–2022)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
1. The Authors propose a classification system of floods events. I think their classification is reliable and might be used in other countries. However, I believe that ‘Materials & methods’ section as well as some terms/words/terminology used by the Authors should be better explained. A correctly written methodology ensures the reproducibility of the research and the possibility of its use by others.
2. English is not bad but some sentences are very long and therefore difficult to understand.
3. If it is a research manuscript it should be divided according to the journal’s guidelines: “We do not have strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the required sections: Author Information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Conclusions, Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest and other Ethics Statements.”
4. Please change the citation form according to the journal’s guidelines. The same with reference list.
5. I think you should base the introduction on existing literature, now you cite only one paper (Thorndycraft et al., 2006). As it is stated in journals “instructions for authors’ (about the introduction section): “The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited.”
6. Weblinks should be listed in the ‘Reference’ list and cited in the text (the whole website addresses are not necessary in the main text). Same with any legal acts you refer to – it all should be listed in the ‘Reference’ section.
Specific comments:
7. Line 68: You have to decide whether “2. State of Art Processing of Historical Flood Information” is a part of ‘Materials & methods’ or ‘Introduction’ section. Maybe ‘Materials & methods’? As it gives some theoretical background on data.
8. Line 74: “Work experience” – what work experience? It is a very general term.
9. Lines 76-77: “To summarise, 3 types of information sources are identified” – You should clearly state the source of this division: is it your division, or division by Barriendos et al., 2014 or by the national projects PREDIFLOOD and MEDIFLOOD? Or is it yours but based on these materials?
10. Lines 99-101: Again, you should clearly state whose division this is. It is based on what source?
11. Lines 94-96: “These criteria may be distant or different from the most common in historiographical research, but they are the ones that have given the best results in the identification and characterisation of extreme natural phenomena on the Spanish Mediterranean Basin.” – Why do you think these criteria have given the best results? Based on what? You should cite here some source material.
12. Line 167: “such as, among others” – I suggest you should keep only one term: “such as” or “among others”.
13. Line 206: You should clearly state that CNIH and AMIC are databases. I know they are listed in the Table 1 but adding that info in the text would make it easier and faster to understand.
14. Table 1: Please use space/comma to facilitate reading numbers, for example ‘493 838’. Why did you provide time range only for 3 databases? Please be consistent. If both CNIH databases work until now you should add this info. Also what do you mean by ‘average’? Please use ‘km2’ instead of ‘Km2’ (in accordance with the SI system). You should describe coverage index more clearly: is it (area * years)/106 km2? Also why 106 km2? And please use ‘km2’ instead of ‘km2’. Moreover, you should clearly state in the text what those indexes mean, what is their purpose.
15. I suggest including information about what type of data is gathered in these databases: date of flood, coordinates, range etc.
16. Line 306: There are four categories: 0, 1, 2, and 3.
17. Lines 440-441: “the Júcar Hydrographic Demarcation (Jucar Catchment Authority)” – is it some kind of record/book/document? Or is it a name of some region?
18. Line 443: Again, what is the Júcar Hydrographic Demarcation? You should be more specific with names so that ‘outsiders’ could understand.
19. Line 441: “18 cases” – cases of what? Cases of flood within this one flood from 27 September 1517? Separate cases registered in some papers/documents/books? Or maybe floods in different cities/villages?
20. Lines 448 and 449: I suggest removing the term ‘Own elaboration’.
21. Figure 1: Please change term ‘Impact distribution’ to ‘impact range’ or ’impacted area’. Change ‘Km’ to ‘km’. “Black line: Limit of Hydrographic Demarcation” - is it some hydrographic region? If it is, you should refer a classification of hydrographic regions in Spain (if there is one). If it is not and black line only generally shows this region against the map of Spain, I suggest removing description “Black line: Limit of Hydrographic Demarcation”. Please add explanation of “ERR”.
22. Line 458: I know I am repeating the same question but if there is some hydrographic division of Spain, you should cite it in the text.
23. Line 463: Please change ‘by the flood on day 2nd” to “by the flood on the 2 of November”.
24. Figures 2 and 3: The same comments as in figure 1. Also, you could merge fig. 2 and 3 into one figure. Same with figures 4 and 5. But I leave this decision to the Authors.
25. Lines 478-479: What do you mean by “This episode serves as an example for the representation of episodes with more than one flood case at the same point.” You should be more precise what do you mean by floods, cases, episodes. In Valencia there was one flood (episode) with many cases but here you say there was an episode with more than one flood case. I do not understand the difference.
26. Figure 6 and 7: The same comments as in fig. 1.
27. Line 518: How do you calculate episode index? What is the application of this index?
28. Line 524: Here you call Ic a case index but in line 400 it is a composite index. Please be more consistent and choose one name.
29. Table 2: Which column shows values of Ie index? Again, define hydrographic demarcations, number of cases – you should add definitions in ‘Materials & methods’ section. Remove ‘Own elaboration’.
30. The ‘discussion’ section is a mix of a discussion and conclusions. Please, expand the discussion. You should confront your results with results of other authors, maybe indexing systems of other countries. If there is no similar system anywhere, you should also write about it.
Author Response
Thanks for your constructive and positive comments. Please see the point-to-point reply in the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
November 15, 2022
Dear Authors:
This manuscript entitled “Historical Floods on the Spanish Mediterranean Basin: A Methodological Proposal for the Cataloguing and Classification of Information at High Spatio-Temporal Resolution (CE 1035-2022)” presents a method based on weighted scores to classifing historical flood events considering 1) Hydraulic behaviour of the river flood, 2)Flood impact on structural elements, 3) Social/personal vulnerability to the flood. The topic is interesting and fits the scope of the journal, but I think the manuscript requires further detailes to be considered for publication in Land - MDPI.
Following are some comments:
It is not clear what (CE 1035-2022) means in the title. I think dates refer to the analyzed period, but I only supposed it after reading the text. During my first reading of the title, I didn’t understand its meaning.
The title is not completely correct. After I read the paper, I think the proposed methodology is valid just for classifying the flood events, but not for cataloguing the events that are already available on specific databases.
The introduction, as well as the State of Art Processing of Historical Flood Information section, do not provide adequate references. Just two or three publications are cited in this part of the text. In my opinion, the text needs to be improved from this point of view.
Line 70: The required information for the reconstruction of flood events on a historical level is presented in multiple documentary and bibliographic sources. Can you add some examples of sources?
About the definition of Variable 2. Structural Component values, are you evaluating that the typology of the building has changed over time? So, I think that a structure built on 1035 has a different response to the flow with respect to modern structures. It could influence the values associated with this variable.
Line 385: But events with human involvement are also recorded and catalogued, such as dam 385 breaching due to natural events, rapid emptying of dams due to technical decisions, or tactical interest in war situations.
Can you provide some examples with dates?
Sorry but I simply don’t understand how you can evaluate the vulnerability of the population in the event of 1517 for example. Moreover, I imagine that the population was different in terms of number and density since now, so could this influence the result?
I think it is not necessary to write “own elaboration” under each image or table. They are shown in the results, it is obvious that are your products.
5. is Conclusions and not Discussion.
Author Response
Thanks for your constructive and positive comments. Please see the point-to-point reply in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I think the topic of the present paper is highly relevant to the Journal, and most of the arguments of this paper are original and interesting. After reviewing the MS, my major concerns are as follow:
1. In the abstract section, the implications of this study should be highlighted at the end of the abstract. Answer the questions carefully: What problem did you study, and why is it important? What methods did you use? What were your main results? And what conclusions can you draw from your results?
2. Please rewrite the abstract as follows: 1-2 sentences on the context and the need for the study; several sentences on the model; 2-3 sentences on how the model can be applied and its capabilities; 1-2 sentences on key conclusions and recommendations.
3. The structure of this study could be further improved to make it in a clearer way, see the following or similar: Introduction, Literature reviews, Materials and Methods, Case Study, Results and Discussion, Policy and Managerial Implications, and Conclusion. You should use up-to-date and recent articles to improve Literature reviews section. You can use:
*Evaluation of the climate change impact on the intensity and return period for drought indices of SPI and SPEI (study area: Varamin plain)
*A Novel Framework for Urban Flood damage Assessment
*Threshold-based hybrid data mining method for long-term maximum precipitation forecasting
*A review on applications of urban flood models in flood mitigation strategies
*Application of a hybrid association rules/decision tree model for drought monitoring
4. The current Introduction is too simple, it should include background, current progress, research gaps and the objective of this study, etc. A comprehensive literature is required for identifying the research gaps and highlight the necessity for carrying out this study.
5. Please emphasize the novelty and impactful contribution of this work as currently this appears to be marginal. The scientific contributions of this study could be further improved.
6. Lots of language issues should be corrected, and it is really hard to follow at the point.
7. In the results and discussion section, there is not citation. Authors should show the readers with breadth and depth in this section. "Breadth" reflects whether the analytical results can be explained via different approaches. "Depth" reflects whether the analytical results completely answer the questions raised in the MS. This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them.
8. It is necessary to compare your results with previous studies.
9. References should be prepared according to the author guidelines provided at the journal web site. There are some inconsistencies and inaccuracies in punctuation. Authors should also refer to more recent literature. Try to refer to studies from this journal as well.
Author Response
Thanks for your constructive and positive comments. Please see the point-to-point reply in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The Authors answered to all my questions and applied suggestions to the text. However, the discussion section is missing. You should confront your results with the results of other authors, maybe indexing systems of other countries. If there is no similar system anywhere, you should also write about it. If you do not want to introduce ‘discussion’ as a separate section, then you could combine results and discussion sections.
Discussion is a mandatory section; journal guidelines: "Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results."
Below some more technical issues (not influencing the quality of the paper):
Some words are shown in bold in the abstract, please change it.
Citations and reference list are not adapted to journal guidelines.
Maps: You haven’t changed ‘Km’ to ‘km’.
Figures 2, 3, 4 and 5: Please place captions below the figures (not above).
Author Response
Thanks for your constructive and positive comments. Please see the point-to-point reply in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
After reading the revised manuscript, I think it is ready for pubblication in Land MDPI. However, some punctuation in the text need to be corrected. Please, read carfully text and edit it.
The topic of the reasearch is really intresting, I think this manuscript will be appreciate in the scientific community.
Author Response
Thanks for your constructive and positive comments. Please see the point-to-point reply in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I the revised version is acceptable
Author Response
Thanks for your constructive and positive comments. Please see the point-to-point reply in the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
