Brief communication: Using averaged soil moisture estimates to improve the performances of a regional-scale landslide  early warning system

Segoni, Samuele; Rosi, Ascanio; Lagomarsino, Daniela; Fanti, Riccardo; Casagli, Nicola

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-807-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-807-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Landslide early warning systems: monitoring systems, rainfall...

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-807-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

Brief communication

|

13 Mar 2018

Brief communication |

| 13 Mar 2018

Brief communication: Using averaged soil moisture estimates to improve the performances of a regional-scale landslide early warning system

Samuele Segoni, Ascanio Rosi, Daniela Lagomarsino, Riccardo Fanti, and Nicola Casagli

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Mar 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Oct 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'nhess-2017-361 (referee) - referee comment request', Anonymous Referee #1, 21 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Referee1', Samuele Segoni, 30 Dec 2017
RC2: 'Review to nhess-2017-361 by Segoni et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Dec 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Referee2', Samuele Segoni, 30 Dec 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) (01 Jan 2018) by Thomas Glade

AR by Samuele Segoni on behalf of the Authors (23 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Jan 2018) by Thomas Glade

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (08 Feb 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The MS has been revised, and I think it should be now published after some little modifications, following the lines below:

While the manuscript has been revised, the abstract has not. For instance, P1L7 “we improved” needs to be weakened with something like “We communicate the results of a preliminary investigation aimed at improving…”; also “punctual soil moisture estimates” can be misleading – as the corresponding author clarified and agreed in the response to my comments.

P5L26 A point referring to the need to conduct a more in-depth validation of the SIGMA-U methodology/model should be added, as I am not satisfied with the cross-validation (leave-one-out test) analysis the authors show in the response to my comments: I however think that to add just a sentence in the conclusions can be more than sufficient for the aim of the brief communication in question.

P2L23 I imagine that the “Gaussian distribution” is a “Standard Gaussian distribution” i.e. having zero mean and variance equal to 1. Otherwise it makes almost no sense to think that there is a univocal relationship between standard deviation and probability. Please explain/correct

P5P10 As I have commented for the abstract, “we improved” is too strong. Please weaken this statement

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Some technical corrections (-> = replace):

P1L26 Crozier -> Cozier

P1L29 RSLEWS -> RSLWS

P2L2 triggering of landslides -> landslides triggering

P2L4 short-term -> short term

P2L6 remove “state-of-the-art” since I imagine that from 2002 (year of publication of TOPKAPI model) to now, hydrological models have improved significantly

P2L8 discuss -> discussed

P6 L10 Reference to Bogaard and Greco needs to be updated

P7 L14 Melillo -> Melillom

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (18 Feb 2018) by Thomas Glade

AR by Samuele Segoni on behalf of the Authors (18 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We improve the warning system (WS) used to forecast landslides in Emilia Romagna (Italy) by using averaged soil moisture estimates. We tested two approaches. The first (based on a soil moisture threshold under which the original WS is not used) is very simple, reduces false alarms and can be easily applied elsewhere. The second (integrating rainfall and soil moisture thresholds in the WS) is more complicated but reduces both false alarms and missed alarms.