Are flood damage models converging to “reality”?  Lessons learnt from a blind test

Molinari, Daniela; Scorzini, Anna Rita; Arrighi, Chiara; Carisi, Francesca; Castelli, Fabio; Domeneghetti, Alessio; Gallazzi, Alice; Galliani, Marta; Grelot, Frédéric; Kellermann, Patric; Kreibich, Heidi; Mohor, Guilherme S.; Mosimann, Markus; Natho, Stephanie; Richert, Claire; Schroeter, Kai; Thieken, Annegret H.; Zischg, Andreas Paul; Ballio, Francesco

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2997-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2997-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2997-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 11

Research article

|

09 Nov 2020

Research article |

| 09 Nov 2020

Are flood damage models converging to “reality”? Lessons learnt from a blind test

Daniela Molinari, Anna Rita Scorzini, Chiara Arrighi, Francesca Carisi, Fabio Castelli, Alessio Domeneghetti, Alice Gallazzi, Marta Galliani, Frédéric Grelot, Patric Kellermann, Heidi Kreibich, Guilherme S. Mohor, Markus Mosimann, Stephanie Natho, Claire Richert, Kai Schroeter, Annegret H. Thieken, Andreas Paul Zischg, and Francesco Ballio

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Nov 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Feb 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Overall review of paper', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Mar 2020
- AC1: 'reply to referees comments', Daniela Molinari, 20 May 2020
RC2: 'Review “Are flood damage models converging to reality? Lessons learnt from a blind test”', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'reply to referees comments', Daniela Molinari, 20 May 2020
RC3: 'Review: Are flood damage models converging to reality? Lessons learnt from a blind test', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'reply to referees comments', Daniela Molinari, 20 May 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) (01 Jun 2020) by Daniele Giordan

AR by Lorena Grabowski on behalf of the Authors (24 Jun 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Jul 2020) by Daniele Giordan

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (02 Aug 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The study reports an interesting point of view to be considered in practical applications of flood damage assessment. The manuscript is well written, and the methodology, data and results are well discussed, however it is very case-study specific. So, I suggest a few elements that should be improved to make the work more useful to support the application of damage estimation models in other sites.

Major comments

As from figure 8, table 5 and comments in the text, it is clear that all the observed and estimated damage are not correlated. This fact is very interesting and deserve to be investigated in more detail. How these differences are located in space? Is there any spatial pattern of model overestimation and, are these patterns dependent on topographic/hydraulic parameters?

The “transferability” of a model is recalled in different points of the text. However, the study does not give a real support to the transferability because only a single case study is analyzed. Instead, “internal transferability” could be useful and should be discussed in more detail: I would have expected that the models were also calibrated (or parameterized on the basis of a blinded dataset) only on a subset of the 345 known building and then validated on the remaining complementary subset. Results from this application could then be used to “transfer” the application to the set of (877-345) “ungauged” buildings where no damage data is available. Do the authors have tried this option?

Minor comments

Page 7, line 166 and throughout the text. It is not clear if each research group have implemented all the selected models (and there are multiple realizations of the same model) or if each research group have implemented one model.

Page 7, step 4. This step is commonly referred to as sensitivity analysis; the authors may evaluate if recalling this definition can improve readability.

Typos
Page 21, line 442. Delete “in, as.”

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RR by Anonymous Referee #5 (16 Aug 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Sep 2020) by Daniele Giordan

AR by Svenja Lange on behalf of the Authors (16 Sep 2020) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (02 Oct 2020) by Daniele Giordan

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Short summary

Flood risk management requires a realistic estimation of flood losses. However, the capacity of available flood damage models to depict real damages is questionable. With a joint effort of eight research groups, the objective of this study was to compare the performances of nine models for the estimation of flood damage to buildings. The comparison provided more objective insights on the transferability of the models and on the reliability of their estimations.