The paper is well devised and written. Nice to see the paper start from Greek mythology and good to see the paper swiftly becomes more tangible, indeed. Good also to take a short cut to the core, rather than reviewing the scholarly journey from managing hazards to risks. Laudible to recount Hyogo and Sendai (that part might be a bit on the longish side), too. The paper then comments on many of the known challenges in multi-risk assessments and the lack of case studies at least in the academic literature. Sad to note that there are quite some in reports etc., especially in the context of local or regional climate adaptation. The research agenda presented does clearly state the cornerstones of such an endeavour, yet the proof will be in the (open-source and -access) implementation and its transferability, which will very much depend on the interoperability of (sub)models and modules. Hence some emphasis might have been put on interoperability rather than a fully unified framework which might take a long time to emerge and even more so to be readily applicable. The approach from the problem side, i.e. embracing sustainability challenges, looks promising - yet framing the problem from a resiliency angle (i.e. the strengthening thereof) might proof to be very valuable, too.

The article by Ward et al. provides an interesting perspective on how to respond and manage multi-hazard and their increasing risks in light of global changes such as globalization and climate changes. It offers a comprehensive overview of the historic developments in disaster risk management, summarizes challenges of traditional approaches and provides a suggested way forward, centred around sustainability. I particularly enjoyed the introductory references and remarks on ancient history and would very much welcome to see this paper published as it offers a helpful reference, a nicely written entry point to the general topic and some new important concepts. I therefore have only some minor suggestions and very much hope the authors find them useful.

As this is a perspective that highlights the need to unify language for progress it would be very helpful if some important terms such as disasters, hazards, risks and their multi-counterparts (‘multiple-disasters’, ‘multi-hazards’, ‘multi-risks’ ) are defined early on and then used consistently throughout. Currently they are used synonymously (e.g. Section 2 is headed risk to multi-risks but talks mostly about multi-hazards, later multiple disasters is used as well. e.g.l.285), but are they really the same? If multi-hazards lead to amplified risk (a probability?) of severe impacts, what is a ‘multi-risk’ etc.? 

It would be helpful if the challenges listed in section 3 and the suggested research agenda discussed in section 4 would be closer linked and directly referenced in the text. Is there a correspondence between those sections that deserves to be further highlighted?

l.64: Is globalisation and concentration the only driver of increased impacts? Some Natural Hazards surely have become more impactful by increased frequency and magnitude due to Climate Change.

l.153. what would be a ‘tool’ and what would be a ‘method’ in this context? Are they the same?

l.145 paradigm shift is needed. For what exactly? For disaster risk management?

The challenge in line l.194 is a bit difficult to understand as the aspects listed in the title are not necessarily related?

l.212 ‘has been’

l.239 The meaning of this sentence is hard to understand ‘We present a research agenda that help us move towards this approach.’ Is it rather a research agenda that implements this approach? How do you move towards an approach?

l.260 what is a ‘risk-driver’?

l.281 This is a bit of a complicated sentence as ‘framework’ are used twice with likely different meaning? ‘..achieve this by co-developing the ‘framework’, and products and services to operationalise the ‘framework’.

l.297 scales stand for temporal, spatial scales?