Large-scale risk assessment on snow avalanche hazard in alpine regions

Ortner, Gregor; Bründl, Michael; Kropf, Chahan M.; Röösli, Thomas; Bühler, Yves; Bresch, David N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-2089-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-2089-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-2089-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

Research article

|

13 Jun 2023

Research article |

| 13 Jun 2023

Large-scale risk assessment on snow avalanche hazard in alpine regions

Gregor Ortner, Michael Bründl, Chahan M. Kropf, Thomas Röösli, Yves Bühler, and David N. Bresch

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Jun 2023)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Apr 2022)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on nhess-2022-112', Pascal Haegeli, 06 Aug 2022

Please see the attached PDF for my comments.

Pascal Haegeli

Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC, Canada

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-112-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Gregor Ortner, 08 Aug 2022
  
  Thank you very much for your effort, the careful review and constructive improvements. They will help us a lot to upgrade the manuscript. We are still waiting for the second review and may come back to you in case of any discussion points regarding your review.
  Yours sincerely
  Gregor Ortner
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-112-AC1
- AC2: 'Reply on RC1 and RC2', Gregor Ortner, 21 Dec 2022
  
  Our final author comments (ACs) adressing RC1 and RC2 on behalf of all co-authors can be found in the attached document. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-112-AC2
RC2:
'Comment on nhess-2022-112', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Nov 2022

Please see the attached PDF for my comments on the manuscript.

Best wishes.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-112-RC2
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Gregor Ortner, 08 Aug 2022
  
  Thank you very much for your effort, the careful review and constructive improvements. They will help us a lot to upgrade the manuscript. We are still waiting for the second review and may come back to you in case of any discussion points regarding your review.
  Yours sincerely
  Gregor Ortner
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-112-AC1
- AC3: 'Reply on RC1 and RC2', Gregor Ortner, 21 Dec 2022
  
  Our final author comments (ACs) adressing RC1 and RC2 on behalf of all co-authors can be found in the attached document "nhess-2022-112-final-author-comments-ACs". Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-112-AC3

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (30 Dec 2022) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Gregor Ortner on behalf of the Authors (10 Feb 2023) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (13 Feb 2023) by Paolo Tarolli

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (24 Feb 2023)

RR by Pascal Haegeli (12 Mar 2023)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript again.

As pointed out in my first review of this manuscript, I judge the content of this study to be interesting and very valuable for the NHESS readership. While the authors have put considerable effort into revising the manuscript based on the reviewer comments from the first round, there are still a few issues that I think need to be addressed before the manuscript can be considered for publications.

The writing quality of this manuscript is still an issue. This relates to all levels of writing including the overall organization of the manuscript (e.g., repetition between sections), paragraph structure (e.g., only one idea/though should be presented per paragraph), consistency in terminology (e.g., avalanche pressure versus avalanche impact pressure, assets versus objects), writing style, and grammar. I strongly encourage the authors to edit their manuscript in detail for clarity, conciseness, consistency, and grammar. The attached PDF includes a lot of comments to guide the necessary revisions, but my comments are not comprehensive.

The use of abbreviations is still a challenge in this manuscript. While this issue was pointed out by both reviewers in the first round, it has not been be addressed meaningfully. There are still a lot of abbreviations, many of them are introduced repeatedly and used inconsistently. Furthermore, having the abbreviations in all lower-case is awkward as they do not pop out from the regular text. Some of my comments in the attached PDF relate to this issue.

It is still my opinion that improved discussion and conclusion sections would increase the value and impact of this manuscript considerably. The discussion still seems to be too focused on limitations. Many of the discussed limitations relate to shortcomings of the individual components of the presented approach, which are already discussed in the relevant references. In my opinion, these discussions could be shortened considerably, and there should be more focus on how these limitations play together and affect the results of the overall system. Also, the current conclusion section is extremely short and does not seem to provide the reader with an insightful overall summary of the study.

Please also make sure that you follow the NHESS author instructions at https://www.natural-hazards-and-earth-system-sciences.net/submission.html. For example, additional material is presented in appendices and not annex, and figures and tables in appendices need to be labelled with the letter of the appendix as well (e.g., Fig. A1).

I hope you find my comments constructive and useful for the revision of your paper.

Pascal Haegeli
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC, Canada.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (20 Mar 2023) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Gregor Ortner on behalf of the Authors (06 Apr 2023) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (23 Apr 2023) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Gregor Ortner on behalf of the Authors (03 May 2023) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This paper presents a new approach to assess avalanche risk on a large scale in mountainous regions. It combines a large-scale avalanche modeling method with a state-of-the-art probabilistic risk tool. Over 40 000 individual avalanches were simulated, and a building dataset with over 13 000 single buildings was investigated. With this new method, risk hotspots can be identified and surveyed. This enables current and future risk analysis to assist decision makers in risk reduction and adaptation.