This review article aims to develop a metric to define coastal vulnerability induced by cyclonic hazards in Bangladesh. The vulnerability was defined in terms of physical infrastructure, social and cultural factors, and economic factors. The manuscript is well-written in general. However, the results obtained in this study are nothing special from the nature of coastal Bangladesh, mostly known from various studies. I have a few major observations which I would like the authors to address diligently before it can be considered for publication. Of particular concern is the motivation for carrying out such a study, as well as, its contribution to the existing scientific literature. More specific comments are given below:

• I am surprised to see that several important recent studies were not included in this study, given a systematic review was done. A few examples are given below. I feel the incorporation of these studies will strengthen the motivation and validity of this article:

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-353-2019

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.048

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104868

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71093-8_16

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-3027-8

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-018-0034-1

• The coastal region of Bangladesh is subject to multiple types of flooding such as pluvial, fluvio-tidal, and cyclone-induced storm surge flooding. Cyclonic flood events in this region are usually accompanied by pluvial flooding. Flood vulnerability tends to change with an increase in the complexities of flood events. In this manuscript, the authors have not discussed the complex coastal flooding processes and associated vulnerability in Bangladesh. They could consult some of the articles suggested above.
• Section 4.1: The methodology for selecting articles is not clear. First, I am not convinced with the inclusion of Google Scholar as one of the search engines as it tends to include articles that are not scientifically valid. How did the authors ensure that whether articles obtained from Google scholar are peer-reviewed or not?
• The authors said that “This review excludes non-peer-reviewed articles, in the aim to obtain a state of the art’s review of the current knowledge extracted from scientific literature only, to make sure of high scientific quality standards in the selected articles”. How did they define “high scientific quality standards”? This comment does not apply to articles obtained from other search engines.
• I believe the authors found many articles from the initial search. How the 49 articles were selected? What were the exclusion criteria? The authors need to clarify in their manuscript. Appendix A1 only included the inclusion criteria.
• Bangladesh has a long history of implementing various flood adaptation and prevention measures against various coastal flooding. Coastal embankments are the well-known flood protection measures that have been adopted in Bangladesh. Existing studies have quantified the effectiveness of such measures against complex coastal flooding including cyclonic flood events. This article significantly simplifies the actual coastal flood processes. The authors need to discuss how the adoption of various flood interventions alters flood vulnerability in the coastal region.
• Line 454-455: According to this study, the length of dykes and embankments is negatively correlated with cyclone vulnerability. But the following study provided various evidence indicating that such embankments were less effective against historical cyclonic flood events. Moreover, these measures promoted associated pluvial flooding. The authors need to justify the selection of various factors used in developing the vulnerability metric.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.048

• Similarly, the capacity of shelters was perceived to be negatively associated with cyclone vulnerability. However, results from various studies indicated that various social factors are associated with the use of shelters during a cyclone event. During several events, people were reluctant to use cyclone shelters Please see the following study:

https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12062

Such a scenario creates uncertainty in the obtained results. The authors should include a discussion on uncertainties related to the factors considered for the vulnerability metric.  

• Section 6.1: This section lacks in critical discussion of the obtained results. The authors need to discuss how their findings are similar or different from the results of various existing studies.
• Finally, the motivation for carrying out such a study needs to be very clear. The authors mainly argued that “Thus, more than developing a new vulnerability concept, the novelty of our study lies in the methodological adaptation of existing approaches, like social vulnerability index (Flanagan et al., 2011), to the specific cyclone flooding context.” I feel this is not enough. The authors should clearly identify the gaps in the existing literature and explain how this study addresses those gaps.          

Review NHESSD

This article develops the socio-spatial vulnerability of 16 coastal districts of Bangladesh based on the vulnerability indicators at district levels. The contribution of this analysis is not new, as the authors have already shown in their literature review that a growing body of literature describes how vulnerable the coastal communities in Bangladesh are. In this paper, the specification that I see is the combination of people and place vulnerability to compare the districts, which are mostly known from various studies. I am a bit concerned about the literature search portal, like google is not such confident sources for academic publication searches. Then it is needed to describe how the final list of the review prepared, based on what criteria the article was selected for review, i.e. exclusion criteria must be written in the methodology section.  Although the literature review is well-organized and written, I would suggest that the author recheck a few recent scholarships, which may add new dimensions in vulnerability indicators.

Adnan et al. (2019) Have coastal embankments reduced flooding in Bangladesh? Science of The Total Environment, Volume 682, Pages 405-416,

Feroz et al. (2019) Flood risk assessment due to cyclone-induced dike breaching in coastal areas of Bangladesh, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 19, 353–368, 2019

Younus, M.A.F. (2017) An assessment of vulnerability and adaptation to cyclones through impact assessment guidelines: a bottom-up case study from Bangladesh coast. Nat Hazards 89, 1437–1459

Though the authors have mentioned based on their reviews that cyclonic storms are the major environmental threat in the coastal districts, also the tidal-surge induced floods needed to be considered, and the severity of vulnerability due to such tidal-surged induced inundations can change overall land use and livelihood pattern of the people. An example can be taken from cyclone Aila 2009, which also motivates people to shift from shrimp to rice cultivation which is absent in their discussion. Authors are suggested to revisit such land use transformation. Temporal migration or translocal livelihood is one of the major aspects of the vulnerability constructs of the people living in this region. However, the author has not taken into consideration this displacement indicator into their vulnerability index. Taking the displacement indicator of each district might result in different vulnerability indexes for major cities (i.e. districts). Data collected from different years and sources raise the homogeneity in nature and the temporality of analysis. I propose to describe these as limitations.

Besides the flood risks management is not very new in Bangladesh; it has a long history, including the polderization and adopted indigenous knowledge. It would be great if the author could add/ review how the flood risk management knowledge evolved in these coastal settings and justify why their study related to coastal flooding's socio-spatial vulnerability index is essential. Polderzation and the recent Delta Plan 2100 should be taken into consideration.

The authors also address the cyclone shelter and evacuation process into the indicator lists. However, they do not mention how the community people decide the location of those cyclone shelter cum primary schools or any other community infrastructure and how the social elite controls the planning procedures. These are significant short-comings along with the revision of the motivations of the study. I would suggest that authors specify why their contribution is novel despite having a larger body of literature on vulnerability assessment of coastal Bangladesh.