Between global risk reduction goals, scientific–technical capabilities and local realities: a modular approach for user-centric multi-risk assessment

Schoepfer, Elisabeth; Lauterjung, Jörn; Riedlinger, Torsten; Spahn, Harald; Gómez Zapata, Juan Camilo; León, Christian D.; Rosero-Velásquez, Hugo; Harig, Sven; Langbein, Michael; Brinckmann, Nils; Strunz, Günter; Geiß, Christian; Taubenböck, Hannes

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-4631-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-4631-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Multi-risk assessment in the Andes region

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-4631-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 12

Research article

|

17 Dec 2024

Research article |

| 17 Dec 2024

Between global risk reduction goals, scientific–technical capabilities and local realities: a modular approach for user-centric multi-risk assessment

Elisabeth Schoepfer, Jörn Lauterjung, Torsten Riedlinger, Harald Spahn, Juan Camilo Gómez Zapata, Christian D. León, Hugo Rosero-Velásquez, Sven Harig, Michael Langbein, Nils Brinckmann, Günter Strunz, Christian Geiß, and Hannes Taubenböck

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Final revised paper (published on 17 Dec 2024)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Nov 2023)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on nhess-2023-142', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Nov 2023

I have provided my comments in the attached file.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-142-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Elisabeth Schoepfer, 21 Mar 2024
  
  We thank you very much for the recognition of the paper’s relevance. We would like to express our gratitude for your valuable comments and suggestions for improvement. We are committed to enhance the quality of our manuscript based on your comments and aim to carefully consider all concerns and incorporate the suggestions in an improved version of the manuscript. Please find our comment-by-comment feedback in the attached PDF document.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-142-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on nhess-2023-142', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Mar 2024

Please see attached review.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-142-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Elisabeth Schoepfer, 05 May 2024
  
  Thank you very much for your kind feedback on our manuscript. We appreciate your thorough review and suggestions for improvement. Please find our comment-by-comment feedback (answers in blue; proposed changes in the manuscript in red) as follows.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-142-AC2

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) (20 May 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud

AR by Elisabeth Schoepfer on behalf of the Authors (21 May 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 May 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 May 2024)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of revised manuscript nhess-2023-142 “Between global risk reduction goals, scientific-technical capabilities and local realities: a novel modular approach for multi-risk assessment” by Schoepfer et al.

Thank you very much to the authors for their detailed responses to my comments (Anonymous Referee 2) and those of Anonymous Referee 1.

Your replies were clear and you let us know what you changed as a result in the manuscript. Many replies though were slightly confusing as you used future tense (‘we will do….’ ‘we will add…’) rather than telling us what you in fact did. I think this was the result of taking the reply in the response to our comments online, rather than the current stage of submitting the revised manuscript. However, the intent was mostly clear (although at times confusing, and I had to keep going back to the track change manuscript).

In terms of replies, I think that you have made definite improvements, but at times these were superficial changes of a few words here or there, other times more substantive (e.g., for formatting, or adding in paragraphs here or there); more could have been done to substantively change the results rather than a bit of wordsmithing. As a result, I recommend slightly more than ‘minor’ changes to bring this to an appropriate level for publication. Ultimately, the manuscript will be a good addition to the literature, but taking time now to make the manuscript a bit more robust and in-depth, will make it that much more useful to the community.

I glanced over the Referee 1 comments and replies and will let them reply to those, although did feel, that at times you were sidestepping some of the substance of what was being asked. You answered many of my concerns, but some (will be mentioned below) could have been more substantive changes made.

Abstract. I repeat what I said before. Although you have changed the manuscript you did not understand what I said. “This is a bit high level and more a motivation rather than an actual (with metrics such as ‘how many’ and ‘of what’) summary of the paper. I suggest you rethink a bit the abstract and consider more how it is a summary of the paper.”

An example of including summary numbers to better help the reader might be the following (I’m not saying to use it, but it is an example after running your paper through an AI and asking for a summary):

“In our increasingly interconnected society, urbanization and the vulnerability to natural hazards, including climate change, have created complex risk scenarios. This paper introduces a modular approach for multi-risk assessment aimed at enhancing the capabilities of disaster risk managers, urban planners, and critical infrastructure operators. We developed a simulation and visualization method for various scenarios based on a decentralized system architecture using distributed web services, accessible via a user-friendly interface. Our approach is demonstrated through a case study of earthquakes and tsunamis in the Lima Metropolitan area, a megacity exposed to cascading natural hazards. The development involved a structured feedback process with ## participants over ## years, including ## [? disaster risk managers] and [## ? urban planners], who evaluated the tool's potential as a complementary analysis and visualization aid. Users reported high satisfaction, particularly appreciating the ability to simulate and compare different scenarios. The demonstrator's practical relevance and user-oriented design suggest it as a promising method for improving the understanding and preparedness for complex multi-risk situations.”

Table 1. This is an excellent addition, but (a) please now discuss it in the text (even one sentence) such as “In Table 1 are shown four global strategies from YYYY to YYYY. Within these strategies, we see overall that….”

Vulnerability. Thank you for defining this as physical and systemic. Please add a reference(s) for where you first introduce these definitions at the end of Section 1.

Social vulnerability. In section 4, under complexity, you state that you do not introduce social vulnerability because of data restrictions and data protection issues. Yes, I agree that doing a full analysis of social vulnerability might be difficult, but one can even do partial analyses based on (in this case) census data, or data that IS publically available or from other papers. Stating you could not do it is a bit of a cop-out. Just say you did not do it, and don’t make justifications. As an example, when I go to “Changes in Spatial Inequality and Residential Segregation in Metropolitan Lima” there are nice maps of socio-economic and other variables by district level. I am familiar with Lima, and there are multiple (at least district-level) maps of various characteristics from the different censuses or papers. I get frustrated when people discuss ‘risk’ but then leave out social vulnerability—in this case, you did so, but it was a limitation and could have been added if you had wanted to (even at a course level). Acknowledge it was not part of your design, that there are metrics available to the public that could have been used (roughly) but were not, and that more detailed analysis might have data protection issues.

Conceptual Approach. Previously I suggested you look again at the conceptual approach, to make it a bit more user-friendly and less dense, by breaking out some of the large amounts of text into bullet points or numbers or making it easier to read. You said that “you are aware that there is a lot of information provide. Our target group is the scientific community and not practitioners.” Having a lot of information is fine, and lots of details, but again I ask if you might be able to make it easier to read. I’m part of the scientific community this is aimed at, and had to read the section a couple of times to grasp what was being proposed.

Users. Adding Table 2 was helpful. I’m still confused though how many came from which group and how many participants there were for each year. So in one place you you state 46 participants in year 3 and in another place there were 37 participants in Year 3. I can’t find how many there were in Year 2 or 1, or their realistic makeup, and only twice do you mention for Year 3, and the numbers are different. I’m confused. And, this was a point I brought up before. You need to be much clearer throughout on the number of participants in every workshop, both putting this into the text and into figure captions where ‘percentages’ are mentioned. This is a ‘red flag’ for me, when an author is vague.

Table 3. This is an excellent addition, but please discuss it in a few sentences (or paragraph). What should the reader be taking away from it?

Additional Figures. Thank you for adding these additional figures on the GUI, as they helped to better understand what was being done. Double check that these will be legible though (font size) for the publication.

Discussion. This has been expanded upon (thank you, although could use a bit more depth and insight from lessons learned, particularly around the practical elements of applying this in another location, data, and scalability), but you still do not relate a lot of your ideas back to the existing literature, as I suggested in my original review. In your revision, you added two in-text citations to the one already there. I realise it is not a numbers game, but it highly unusual to have a substantive discussion with so few revisions, particularly given the amount of work you have done (and as you say, this is for the scientific community). Examples of places where you might expand your discussion could be (these are examples):
• Expand on the user feedback, challenges they found, you summarised, relating it back to the wider literature, of what others have found. Are you finding similar results?
• Expand on what would be the minimum amount/types of data to apply this study elsewhere, commenting on limitations, and bringing this back to the wider literature.
• How might your results be integrated into work being done by others. You mention it briefly in the ‘operational system’ but can you go further?
• There are a number of decision support tools out there now, how does this compare with them? This is what you have designed, with two references that include ‘decision support tools’. Can you expand on these as decision-support tools?
•

Minor:
• “It is worth noting” “It has to be noted” “We note” “It should be noted” “It is important to note” are used on over a dozen occasions. I generally avoid these in my own writing, and recommend you look at and remove some of these from the text (if not all of them). As a minimum, remove the ‘it is important’ or ‘It should be’, as these convey an urgency that is not needed.
• I suggest reconsidering the word ‘tested’ and definitely ‘successful tested’ as it often conveys a sense of ‘truth’ to practitioners, for whom this is intended. See “Verification, validation, and confirmation of numerical models in the earth sciences” by Naomi Oreskes et al. (1994). Perhaps instead consider replacing it with the words ‘evaluated’ or we ‘used the approach’? For successful testing, this is difficult to ascertain how successful you really were, so I suggest other words such as ‘applied’.
• Paragraphs. You still have some very long paragraphs.
• First line, Section 4, should ‘novel’ be removed?

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Jun 2024)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (08 Jun 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud

AR by Elisabeth Schoepfer on behalf of the Authors (19 Jun 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Jul 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (23 Jul 2024)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (24 Jul 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud

AR by Torsten Riedlinger on behalf of the Authors (06 Aug 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Aug 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud

ED: Publish as is (29 Aug 2024) by Bruce D. Malamud (Executive editor)

AR by Torsten Riedlinger on behalf of the Authors (09 Oct 2024) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

In this paper, we provide a brief introduction of the paradigm shift from managing disasters to managing risks, followed by single-hazard to multi-risk assessment. We highlight four global strategies that address disaster risk reduction and call for action. Subsequently, we present a conceptual approach for multi-risk assessment which was designed to serve potential users like disaster risk managers, urban planners or operators of critical infrastructure to increase their capabilities.