Trends in social vulnerability to storm surges in Shenzhen, China

Yu, Huaming; Shen, Yuhang; Kelly, Ryan M.; Qi, Xin; Wu, Kejian; Li, Songlin; Yu, Haiqing; Bao, Xianwen

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2447-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2447-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2447-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 9

Research article

|

16 Sep 2020

Research article |

| 16 Sep 2020

Trends in social vulnerability to storm surges in Shenzhen, China

Huaming Yu, Yuhang Shen, Ryan M. Kelly, Xin Qi, Kejian Wu, Songlin Li, Haiqing Yu, and Xianwen Bao

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Sep 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Sep 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Comments on “Temporal Variability of social vulnerability to storm surges in Shenzhen, China” by Yu et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Nov 2019
- AC1: 'Response to Anonymous Reviewer #1', Huaming Yu, 12 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review of “Temporal variability of social vulnerability to storm surges in Shenzhen, China” by Huaming Yu et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Dec 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Anonymous Reviewer #2', Huaming Yu, 13 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) (03 Mar 2020) by Gregor C. Leckebusch

AR by Huaming Yu on behalf of the Authors (13 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (14 May 2020) by Gregor C. Leckebusch

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (28 May 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 May 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments:
As stated in the first review, the proposed research presents a cogent effort to assess the long-term trend in the social vulnerability to storm surge induced flood hazard in Shenzhen, China using a system of SV indicators. Particularly valuable is the complex approach used for the SVI construction, which is a combination and weighting of results obtained through application of three single evaluation methods. It is reconfirmed that the work is interesting in the context of preparedness, mitigation and adaptation of a large city to natural disaster impacts. Such a study is certainly useful for wide range of stakeholders, especially policy makers, local authorities and coastal managers.

The authors have addressed the points raised in the first review in a satisfactory way by:
1) adding more detailed information on storm surge-induced flood hazard intensity and extent and about the most susceptible coastal areas;
2) substantiating the geographical scope of the study revealing that “most areas of Shenzhen are threatened during storm surges”. I consider their argument “This work is a creative attempt to analyze publicly available “macroscopic” data in order to explain the “microscopic” phenomena for such similar Chinese coastal cities” as valid. The work therefore is of considerable scientific and practical importance;
3) providing relevant citations.
4) The Results & Discussion chapter appear to be more balanced with respect the previous one;
5) The text is much more fluent and easy to follow; the use of English was considerably improved.

A general remark about the figures’ captions: some of them are quite short and not explanatory enough. Therefore, it is advisable to extend the captions’ content as much as possible.

There still are several minor technical corrections that the authors might like to consider.

Technical corrections:
L20: “having the most considerable economic development potential”
L21: Use “for evaluation of its”…. “spanning the period 1986 – 2016”.
L22: use “leading to some alterations (or variations) of the social vulnerability trend”
L24: use “afterwards” instead of “in the rest of the time”
L30: use “to an abnormal…”
L36: use “related” or “resulting” instead of “their”
L39: “losses and casualties resulting from”
L40: “governments and local authorities”… “disaster risk prevention…”
L43: use “Both types of …”
L44: Maybe you mean “susceptible to” by using “suitable”
L46: “often occur”
L47: use “suffers” instead of “receives”
L50-51: “The spatial distribution of storm surge disasters shows that Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian and Hainan are the most affected provinces.”
L53: “, respectively, …”
L59: “Risk assessment of tropical..”
L60-61: “An effective coping with disaster risk requires a more rational distribution of efforts in areas such as disaster risk reduction and disaster management.”
L63: use “real” or “tangible” instead of “realistic”
L67: “Therefore, the ability…”
L91: “It is…”
L104: rephrase “last decade” as it is used for publication from 2003-2008.
L105: It is a bit unusual to refer to Figs in the Introduction. You may omit Fig. 1c and first mention it in the study site description, e.g. L135-138, in any case before Fig.2
L103: instead of “capable” you can use “developed” or similar
L126: “for one disaster prone coastal city...”
L129: “during the study period”
L143: “severe.”
L145: “within the city limits”
L147: “Typhoon “7908” made landfall in the end of July 1979, which caused the storm surge level at Red Harbor…”
L151: “caused ever growing…”
L151: “future storm surge impacts”
L186: “above mentioned”
L216: “the smaller the uncertainty and the entropy”
L221: “according to their variation degree, using information..”
L243: “The TOPSIS method is performed in six steps”
L305: “aspects of both population and industrial structure”
L308-309: “Grade I indicators are identified with the three components of vulnerability and the Grade II indicators – with the branches of the Grade I indicators.”
L306: “degree of sensitivity”
L320: “will directly affect their output.”
L323-324: “Representing vulnerable societal groups, students and women are more likely to be injured or even to suffer casualties”
L330: “reflect the general public”
L331: “infrastructure development.”
L333: “the more developed the regional infrastructure is.”
L334: You might consider using “variation pattern”
L350: “corresponding critical thresholds”
L355: “As shown in Fig. 4, the weighted SVI exhibits a well pronounced overall downward trend (–0.006 per year) with noticeable fluctuations”
L361: “Thus, the high social vulnerability stretched over the longest period of time opposed to the low vulnerability, which was only observed during the last two years of the study period.”
L364: “each decade represents a cycle”
L366: “The discovered trend…”… “recover after substantial damage”
L372: “corresponding indices”
L380: “the continuous increase of resilience is the most significant feature…”
L384-386: “EI remains almost constant during the period 1986 -1991 and, after presenting a slight drop between 1992 and 1996, continues growing.”…” Shenzhen transformed from a small fishing village to grids of high-rise buildings after the rapid urbanization that followed the reform and openness policy occurred in 1979. This has led to a continuous decreasing trend of the exposure indicator (Fig. 6).”
L389-390: “Shenzhen entered the second stage of speeded economic growth, during which better protected buildings and factories were built on what used to be farmland.”
L392: Omit “simultaneously”… “the weight of the ‘total sown area of crops’ indicator was relatively large”
L394: use “lowest” instead of “slowest”.
L394: The phrase “SI maintains an upward trend until 2000 to 2011 when the trend exhibits an oblate form” is not clear.
L396: Rephrase, e.g. “showed a significant decreasing trend until 2006, which than sharply increased in a 10-year period”
Fig. 6: female ‘scale’ or ‘proportion’; it’s better using ‘proportion of female population' or 'proportion of females” instead.
L398: “weight of the indicators by benefit and cost types”
L398: Do you mean “similar” by using “proximate” or “closest in relationship; immediate (especially of the cause of something)”?
L400: “The statistical data corresponding to the resilience indicators are generally larger…”
L402-403: Rephrase as “is a measure of degree of influence of this indicator on the social vulnerability”.
L403: “are determined to be the number...”
L407: “act a secondary”
L420: “The best fit equation reads:”
L423: omit “at heightened levels”
L427: “reliability of Eq. (11) is considered high”
L428: omit “from the analysis” or rephrase
Conclusion: Move the last sentence of the first paragraph as follows: “This research evaluates social vulnerability to storm surges in Shenzhen, China, from a macroscale perspective using 30 years of economic statistical data and 24 years of loss data.”
L432: omit “Then,” in the second sentence.
L440: “The trend experiences four stages, passing through high to low social vulnerability”
L443-444:“from exposure, sensitivity and resilience perspective, it is revealed that the increase of the social economy exposure and demographic and industrial structures sensitivity are less important than the disaster resilience”
L445: “while the capacity to withstand and response to disasters has significantly improved”
L448: "The study concludes that the increase of residents' income, infrastructure enhancement and medical and health conditions improvement …”
L459: “reasonable arrangements”
L461: “but their growth rate”
L468: “departments should assess all aspects of the damage”
L470: “disaster risk prevention, preparedness and reduction”
L473: Use “as detail as smaller administrative units, such as districts, towns and streets”. I am not sure if town is smaller disaggregation than district. You may use “residential quarter” instead.
L475: Rephrase as: “Further challenges are related to narrowing of the evaluation scale of social vulnerability and selection of more reasonable indicators according to the local conditions.”

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (11 Jun 2020) by Gregor C. Leckebusch

AR by Huaming Yu on behalf of the Authors (21 Jun 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (25 Jun 2020) by Gregor C. Leckebusch

AR by Huaming Yu on behalf of the Authors (03 Jul 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This study establishes an indicator system for social vulnerability evaluation of storm surges for coastal cities. The indicator system is applied to Shenzhen, China, and socioeconomic impacts are discovered in the results. Exposure, sensitivity, and resilience all show an increasing trend from 1986 to 2016, as resilience accounts for the largest increase and is connected to a decreasing social vulnerability trend.