Assessing Chinese flood protection and its social divergence

Wang, Dan; Scussolini, Paolo; Du, Shiqiang

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-743-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-743-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-743-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

Research article

|

24 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 24 Feb 2021

Assessing Chinese flood protection and its social divergence

Dan Wang, Paolo Scussolini, and Shiqiang Du

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Final revised paper (published on 24 Feb 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Aug 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'review comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Oct 2020
- AC1: 'The author's responses to the comments provided by Anonymous Referee 1', Shiqiang Du, 30 Nov 2020
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Oct 2020
- AC2: 'The author's responses to the comments provided by Anonymous Referee 2', Shiqiang Du, 30 Nov 2020
RC3: 'referee comment', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Oct 2020
- AC3: 'The author's responses to the comments provided by Anonymous Referee 3', Shiqiang Du, 30 Nov 2020
AC4: 'Author's response and tracked revisions', Shiqiang Du, 30 Nov 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) (04 Dec 2020) by Heidi Kreibich

AR by Shiqiang Du on behalf of the Authors (05 Dec 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Dec 2020) by Heidi Kreibich

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (22 Dec 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (08 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have addressed most of the identified issues and have significantly improved the manuscript in this revision. In my opinion, the article is mostly ready for publication, after the following issues are addressed:

General comment 2: The authors have expanded their validation dataset, which is undoubtedly positive. Nevertheless, this is still a validation against design documents, not actual protections. I continue to believe that this limitation must be more clearly acknowledged from the start. For example, the abstract reads: “The new dataset corresponds with local flood protection designs in 91 (53.2%) of the 171 validation counties, and in 154 counties (90.1%) it is very close to the designed FPLs. This suggests that the policy-based FPLs is a valuable proxy for actual FPLs in China.” But the paper provides no evidence that policy-based FPLs are a good proxy for actual FPLs, so this remains a supposition. The conjecture provided in the reply is equally unsupported (i.e. “we believe it is plausible to assume the actual protection of protection infrastructures that are completed and qualified to be equal to or higher than the designed standards, as a result of strict and tight control in the authoritarian administration of China.”). Please refer to your own reply to specific comment 4.

Specific comment 7: It is still not clear if this refers to one single study, or to multiple studies: you use plural but have only provided one reference. Please clarify.

Specific comment 8: I do not think this reply adequately addresses my comment and I remain unsure about the usefulness of this analysis, as the evolution of FPLs is not analysed together with the evolution of the population. The authors should at least acknowledge this limitation in the article.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (08 Jan 2021) by Heidi Kreibich

AR by Shiqiang Du on behalf of the Authors (16 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (18 Jan 2021) by Heidi Kreibich

AR by Shiqiang Du on behalf of the Authors (20 Jan 2021)

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Short summary

Flood protection level (FPL) is vital for risk analysis and management but scarce in realty particularly for developing countries. This paper develops a policy-based FPL dataset for China and validates it using local FPL designs. The FPLs are much higher than that in a global database, suggesting Chinese flood risk could be lower with the policy-required FPLs. Moreover, the FPLs are lower for western China and vulnerable people, implying a spatial and social divergence of the FPLs.