Dear Authors,
Three reviewers have revised your paper. They raised several critical issues that need to be fixed before the publication. Two reviewers suggested a rejection, while one major changes. Usually given such negative feedback, the editorial decision is a rejection. However, giving the relevance of the treated topic (landslide susceptibility mapping along the China-Pakistan economic corridor), that is entirely in line with the goals of the special issue "Landslide–transport network interactions", i decided to wait several days, re-read the entire paper again, and have also a consult with the other guest editors.
My decision, also because you provided a sounded reply during the NHESS open discussion, is to reconsider this paper after major revisions. I think you should have a chance to propose a revised version of your work.
Please note that this editorial decision does not guarantee that your paper will be accepted for final publication in NHESS. Given such major criticalities, a weak reply to the comments raised would result in rejection at the second stage of review.
When the revised version is available, it will be evaluated with the help of the same, or further reviewers.
In submitting your revised version, please provide a detailed list of the changes made to the text and a complete list of your responses to the reviewers’ comments.
In addition, I would also suggest a general improvement of all the figures, in term of style and clarity (e.g. the figure 3 related to rainfall distribution seems at my eyes very weird; the rainfall looks distributed within mountains as a meandering strip...).
Thank you for submitting your work to NHESS.
Best regards
Paolo Tarolli

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your revised manuscript, this was appreciated.

Your manuscript has been revised by two further reviewers #4 and #5 (we approached other reviewers due to the concerns you raised about the first set of reviewers) who raised a few other issues that will need to be addressed before acceptance, but which I believe you can do with a bit of careful rewording and consideration of your work.

Reviewer #4. This reviewer was somewhat critical, with their main concerns related to the novelty of the study and novelty of the methodology presented.

Reviewer #5. This reviewer recognized the value of your work and the effort spent in answering to all the points raised by the three reviewers at the first stage of the review. The reviewer raised two further issues: (i) the definition of shallow landslide in the Table 1, (ii) the comparison with other methods available in literature for landslide susceptibility mapping.

Myself and the other two guest editors of the special issue re-read the entire process and the final outcome is that the paper. We believe that even if your study is case specific and potentially not novel in the methodology, the case study is interesting and in-line with the special issue purpose, and can be a useful reference for future detailed analysis on landslides along the China-Pakistan economic corridor. For the nature of this paper a systematic comparison with other methods is not necessary, but we do ask you to discuss a bit more the broader context of your case study and why it someone outside of your region might be interested--so consider you are explaining your results to another person from another country--what is it they might find interesting that they would find potentially relevant to work they are doing--so although you do not need to be novel, you do need to discuss a bit the broader context of why what you are doing (with reference potentially to the work of other people) is relevant in a broader context.

We there will reconsider this manuscript after moderate-to-major revisions with the recommendation to consider the most useful suggestions provided by the reviewers. In addition to a detailed response to the reviewers’ comments, we would also expect an improvement on the following points:

(1) towards the beginning, a review of any previous work addressing landslide susceptibility in the Karakoram region;
(2) improve the discussion of the results and in particular consider how to put your results into a broader context of why others might be interested in your case study and the results;
(3) highlight the limits about your method;
(4) look again at the balance of the paper, which is a little unbalanced as there is a large section related to study and geologic settings, particularly compared to a shorter discussion part;
(5) some figures are unnecessary (eg. fig.5, fig.7, fig.8), while others need to be improved (eg. fig. 3, the rainfall looks distributed within mountains as a meandering strip);
(6) look at the replies provided during the first stage of the review, it seems that you did not check all the points raised (eg. anonymous Referee #3);

We really are interested in seeing your work accepted for publication, and realize that you have two sets of comments of reviewers you have been working with, but it is clear that your manuscript is improving as a result, making ultimately a manuscript, if accepted for publication, which should attract a higher amount of interest amongst the natural hazard community.

Thank you for submitting your work to NHESS.

Best regards
Paolo Tarolli

Dear authors,
the paper is now improved and I think it is ready for publication. I wish to congratulate with you for the final outcome.
Just a few technical corrections are necessary at this stage:
- scale of the figures: use "km" and not "Kilometers"; also please keep the same format (and style), therefore, in few figures, delete the word "scale" that it is not necessary;
- (a)(b)(c)... letters of the figure: also in this case use the same style and font in all the figures;
- conclusions: avoid to cite the name of the software or the number of figures, since they are not necessary for the conclusions;
- I would recommend again a general check of English;
Thank you for submitting your work to NHESS.
Best wishes
Paolo Tarolli
NHESS Executive Editor