An operational procedure for rapid flood risk assessment in Europe

Dottori, Francesco; Kalas, Milan; Salamon, Peter; Bianchi, Alessandra; Alfieri, Lorenzo; Feyen, Luc

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1111-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1111-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1111-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 7

Research article

|

11 Jul 2017

Research article |

| 11 Jul 2017

An operational procedure for rapid flood risk assessment in Europe

Francesco Dottori, Milan Kalas, Peter Salamon, Alessandra Bianchi, Lorenzo Alfieri, and Luc Feyen

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Jul 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Oct 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review on 'Benchmarking an operational procedure for rapid risk assessment in Europe'', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Nov 2016
- AC1: 'Authors' reply', Francesco Dottori, 06 Mar 2017
RC2: 'Review of paper "Benchmarking an operational procedure for rapid risk assessment in Europe"', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jan 2017
- AC2: 'Authors' reply', Francesco Dottori, 06 Mar 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (13 Mar 2017) by Bruno Merz

AR by Francesco Dottori on behalf of the Authors (02 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 May 2017) by Bruno Merz

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (12 May 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have done a good job in addressing my concerns on the original manuscript, and I believe that this paper would be a valuable addition to the literature. I am happy to recommend publication, subject to the following minor points being addressed:
1. Lines 568-573. Here, several measures that could be taken based on the forecasts are described: “For instance, we are currently evaluating the use of EFAS risk forecast to trigger satellite rapid flood mapping through Copernicus EMS, with the aim of improving response time and detection of flooded areas. More demanding measures (e.g. monitoring flood defences, deployment of emergency services in areas at risk planning evacuation of people at risk), could instead be put in place upon confirmation from local flood monitoring systems”. The first part of this seems fine, but I don’t see the value of the second part, or it needs to be explained more clearly. If a local flood monitoring system already exists for a specific region, then why are the EFAS information for that region needed? I would assume that EFAS is of use in those regions where there is no local flood monitoring system.
2. Lines 590-593: “…whereas probabilistic risk methods (e.g. de Bruijn et al., 2014) and the use of mortality rates calculated from previous flood events (e.g. Tanoue et al., 2016)” Tanoue et al actually apply the method developed by Jongman et al. (2015), which should therefore be cited here.
3. Whilst well written, there are quite a lot of minor grammatical points; a thorough proof-reading by a native speaker would enhance the manuscript further.
References
Jongman, B., Winsemius, H.C., Aerts, J.C.J.H., Coughlan de Perez, E., Van Aalst, M.K., Kron, W., Ward, P.J., 2015. Declining vulnerability to river floods and the global benefits of adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, E2271-E2280, doi:10.1073/pnas.1414439112.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (15 May 2017)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (23 May 2017) by Bruno Merz

AR by Francesco Dottori on behalf of the Authors (06 Jun 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (09 Jun 2017) by Bruno Merz

AR by Francesco Dottori on behalf of the Authors (13 Jun 2017)

Short summary

We present a method to use river flow forecasts to estimate the impacts of flood events in terms of flood-prone areas, economic damage, cities and population at risk. We tested our method by simulating the catastrophic floods occurred in May 2014 in Southern Europe. Comparison with observed data shows that our simulations can predict flooded areas and flood impacts well in advance. The method is now being used for real-time risk forecasts to help emergency response and management.