Dear Authors,

You will find my comments in the uploaded PDF file.

Kind regards

This paper gives a broad consideration of how to improve interoperability of data, models, communication and governance for disaster risk management and climate adaptation. The paper starts with a comprehensive and thoughtful review of well-established ideas. I found it instructive to think about interoperability with regard to communication and governance, which I hadn’t considered before.

My main reflections are that more explanation of key terms or projects is needed because without this the narrative is quite difficult to follow. Real examples would also be extremely helpful throughout. A more detailed description of the DIRECTED project is warranted because at the moment it appears to be a fairly high level overview of what is planned rather than an active project tackling the issues that have been identified earlier in the paper. Detailed comments follow below:

Title: In the title or early on in the paper it would be helpful to indicate that the focus of the paper (if I understand correctly) is Europe. This would help to set what follows in context.

Line 3:  Consider whether ‘emerging’ is the appropriate word here. I would argue that many of the complications that are described in the paper are widely known about.

Line 4: I would argue there are other factors like a lack of investment and capacity in local scientific organisations, which may have implications for interoperability (in some countries). This connects to the need to be clear about the examples that have informed the development of the ideas on which the paper is based.

Line 19: comma missing between ‘drought’ and ‘heavy rainfall’

Line 37-38: A little more information regarding what ‘limited imagination’ pertains to would be helpful here. I would argue that decision makers not understanding the information or information not being action-focused can also be barriers.

Line 59: Would be helpful to give examples of the kinds of hazard variables that might be affected here, especially when taking a multi-hazard view (e.g. the impact of extreme precipitation on slope stability).

Line 60: I wonder if there’s another word that could be used instead of ‘adversely’ here just because it’s not often used at the start of a sentence. ‘Responsibilities… exchange of information and communication, which has an adverse effect’ might work better if that’s what your intended meaning is.

Line 62: ‘homogeneous’ – explain what the homogeneity relates to

Line 64: General point – some examples throughout this section would help to reinforce and/or illustrate the points you are making. It would also help to root the discussion in the geographic context of the paper (or highlight contrasting situations in other contexts if appropriate).

Line 75: Here, it would be worth considering what the implications of these consistencies would be on decision makers (e.g. confusion and decision making that isn’t joined up across borders?)

Line 84: Give full name for INSPIRE

Line134-135: Is there an example that could be given here (if it’s possible to do that)?

Section 2.2: Some illustrative examples would help to root this section in the European context.

Line 247: Explain what ESPREssO is to help readers who may not be familiar with the project.

Section 3.1: Again, some real examples would bring this section to life. At the moment it feels quite ‘hypothetical’. It would be great to include some vignettes of where these sorts of things have been attempted and it has worked/not worked.

Line 363: Some introductory information about DIRECTED would be very helpful here (e.g. when it started, objectives, geographic focus) because it is only mentioned briefly at the start of the paper and there’s a lot of content before it is presented here. Is it being used in practice? Who is involved?

Line 365: explain what is meant by ‘new and improved’

Line 369: a short explainer of the TANDEM framework would be helpful here. Also the IIASA risk layering approach and the SHIELD model should be explained.

Line 373:  More explanation of what an ‘open-source federated data infrastructure’ is would be useful here. What does ‘federated’ mean in this context? In my experience, making information open-source can sometimes be problematic for individuals and/or organisations. It might be worth considering the challenges this might present to what you are proposing.

Line 380: expand APIs

Line 385: more information on the individual real world laboratories is necessary here, e.g. the main challenges the approaches would help to overcome in each setting, who’s involved, progress so far, etc. This would help to connect this section to the earlier sections.