Review article: The spatial dimension in the  assessment of urban socio-economic vulnerability  related to geohazards

Contreras, Diana; Chamorro, Alondra; Wilkinson, Sean

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1663-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1663-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1663-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

Review article

|

05 Jun 2020

Review article |

| 05 Jun 2020

Review article: The spatial dimension in the assessment of urban socio-economic vulnerability related to geohazards

Diana Contreras, Alondra Chamorro, and Sean Wilkinson

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Final revised paper (published on 05 Jun 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Jun 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee comment on NHESS-2019-147, The spatial dimension in the assessment of socio-economic vulnerability challenges for an application on an urban scale, a systematic review', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Jul 2019
- AC2: 'Answers to Reviewer 1', Diana Contreras, 01 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review: nhess-2019-147 The spatial dimension in the assessment of socio-economic vulnerability challenges for an application on an urban scale, a systematic review', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Dec 2019
- AC1: 'Answers to Reviewer 2', Diana Contreras, 01 Feb 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (23 Feb 2020) by Heidi Kreibich

Dear Diana Contreras and Alondra Chamorro,

Thank you for the submission of your manuscript “The spatial dimension in the assessment of socio-economic vulnerability challenges for an application on an urban scale, a systematic review”.

As you know, two reviewers have now provided detailed reviews, which you have replied in detail to. Despite the fact, that one reviewer recommended to reject your manuscript, I offer the possibility to revise the manuscript. I find your topic very interesting and I’m optimistic, that you will be able to significantly and sufficiently improve your manuscript with major revision. However, I expect that quite some effort is necessary.

• One major critique is, that both reviewer doubt that you identified all relevant papers for your research question and focus of review. Of course, the selection of key words for the search are your decision, however, it is also your responsibility to make sure that you identify all relevant papers with your selection of key words.
• Since you want to provide a stat of the art review, I don’t think that it is a good idea to exclude all most recent papers, i.e. the ones published after 2018. Additionally, I suggest that you also present results of key papers, which were published before 2008, maybe in a sort of background or in the introduction chapter.
• Please improve the definition of your research question, and on this basis the criteria on how you reduced the >200 papers to 21. This is a critical point in your method, so this selection needs to be very well justified and transparent.
• The results of your paper analyses should be also improved, and your conclusions need to be underpinned more closely with your results.

Please provide an ‘author’s reply’ to the reviewers and include, in the same author reply document, a track changes document between the old manuscript and the new one.

I look forward to seeing the next version of your manuscript and will send it out again to the previous reviewers.

Regards
Heidi Kreibich
NHESS Executive Editor

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AR by Diana Contreras on behalf of the Authors (04 Apr 2020) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (14 Apr 2020) by Heidi Kreibich

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Apr 2020)

RR by Sven Fuchs (19 Apr 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Referee comment on NHESS-2019-147, The spatial dimension in the assessment of socio-economic vulnerability challenges for an application on an urban scale, a systematic review

Using the two leading databases on scientific journal publications (Scopus/Elsevier and SCI/Clarivate Analytics), the authors performed an assessment of articles published between 2010 and 2020 addressing the social and economic dimensions of vulnerability. A number of 27 publications were finally chosen for a detailed analysis on data sources, spatial variables, indicators, methods, indexes and tools for the spatial assessment of socio-economic vulnerability (SEV) related to geohazards. In the revised version, the paper reads much clearer and is more concise so that the potential readers can follow the string of argumentation as well as (by the included Tables) the relevant indicators discussed.

Overall, the manuscript is therefore suitable for publication in the target journal. My comments on the first version of the manuscript have been thoroughly acknowledged.

The authors may wish to additionally specify the following:

Page 1, line 28: my recommendation here is to refer to the original UNDRR source and not to Aubrecht et al. (2013) – this statement can be found in nearly all publications related to the topic, and I strongly recommend to cite the original source here.

Page 5, line 15: I would recommend to insert “Austria” after Salzburg for those readers not familiar with European cities.

Page 6, lines 8ff: I would prefer to use “endogenic” and “exogenic” geohazards instead of “internal” and “external”, to be in line with the geoscience literature (also page 7, line 21). Moreover, the argument that “…we chose these hazards because they produced high losses… in Chile” seems a bit strange in the context of this manuscript, and can simply be deleted. If it is the choice of the authors to focus on the hazard types indicated, from my point of view, it is not necessary to state the reason. For the overall review it is not important whether or not certain hazard types chosen are relevant in Chile, it simply detracts the reading flow.

Besides, I still have a certain doubt about leaving out other geohazards of exogenic type which – in particular in the US literature – are often subsumed under the term “landslides”, such as the “debris flow”-type hazard group, or the entire group of (gravitational) mass movements – please see e.g. the recent publication of Mazzorana et al. (2019, page 1092) explicitly focusing on Chile. Nevertheless, given the statements made in these lines it is ok for me just to name the hazard groups that were analysed, which in turn explains why other hazard types also relevant (for Chile) are missing.

Reference mentioned:

Mazzorana, B., Picco, L., Rainato, R., Iroumé, A., Ruiz-Villanueva, V., Rojas, C., Valdebenito, G., Iribarren-Anacona, P., and Melnick, D.: Cascading processes in a changing environment: Disturbances on fluvial ecosystems in Chile and implications for hazard and risk management, Science of the Total Environment, 655, 1089-1103, 2019.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (19 Apr 2020) by Heidi Kreibich

AR by Diana Contreras on behalf of the Authors (26 Apr 2020) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Apr 2020) by Heidi Kreibich

AR by Diana Contreras on behalf of the Authors (01 May 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

The socio-economic condition of the population determines their vulnerability to earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, soil erosion and land degradation. This condition is estimated mainly from population censuses. The lack to access to basic services, proximity to hazard zones, poverty and population density highly influence the vulnerability of communities. Mapping the location of this vulnerable population makes it possible to prevent and mitigate their risk.