Dear Authors,
I have read your work on the Marche flood and the comments made by the two reviewers. I should mention that I agree with Reviewer 2, whose suggestions should be implemented.
The manuscript suffers from an “event report” structure: it is not sufficiently organized and reads like a narrative, which is not appropriate for publication in an international journal.
I suggest reducing the current, excessively long 46 pages to something much more concise, highlighting only the key points of the investigation and including solely the figures that are functional to the discussion.
I also recommend adding a flow chart of the methodology used; without it, it is difficult to understand what was done and for what purpose. Everything is too diluted among figures and text that are not useful to the discussion and appear without a clear purpose.
I suggest revising all the figures and linking them properly to the text: include only what is meaningful to the discussion, not everything you found about the event.
You should also revise all tables and figures. For example, Table 1 is completely redundant: the unit of measurement should appear only once at the top of the column, and I don’t understand why you included “/m²”. Moreover, why should an international reader be expected to know Italian car plate codes or the meaning of the acronym SIRMIP? If you do not explain them, you cannot use them.
Figure 6 is unreadable: if it is truly indispensable, you should redraw it using proper graphics software, because this output is not suitable for a scientific journal.
Table 2: the unit of measurement for rainfall is missing, and you should decide whether to consistently use “station” or “rain gauge station” (as in Table 1). The caption is overly long; I don’t think such detail is relevant to an international audience.
I also suggest replacing “RETURN TIME” with “RETURN PERIOD”.
Table 3: it is illegible and, I believe, also unnecessary, since I do not see it cited anywhere in the text.
Lines 265–280: excessively detailed for an international readership.
These are just a few examples to illustrate how the overall structure should be redesigned.
I look forward to seeing the next version of your manuscript which I will then send out for further review to either the previous reviewers (if they agree) or new reviewers.
best regards
Olga Petrucci

Dear Authors
I believe that a further effort must be made to improve the flow of the manuscript and make it more suitable for a scientific journal.

The requests I addressed in the past to the authors are not intended to alter or distort their work and should therefore not be interpreted as a personal criticism. However, since the tone of the response letter suggests that the authors consider the manuscript ready for publication, I felt it necessary to carry out a detailed analysis, as my previous general suggestions appear to have been either overlooked or only partially addressed.

With this review, I would like to demonstrate that the manuscript still requires substantial work before it can be considered suitable for publication. I have focused primarily on the initial sections and on the Discussion and Conclusions; however, I expect that the time and effort that I invested in this detailed revision will help the authors apply the same principles and suggestions to the other sections of the manuscript, which I have not revised in detail.

I understand that reworking a manuscript once it is fully assembled can be frustrating; nevertheless, not all figures collected over years of research can be included, even ef very nice, if they are not directly functional to the objectives of the paper.

When I agreed to act as editor for this manuscript, I did so precisely because of my general interest in event reports. Readers of this type of article usually have to consult many similar papers; therefore, the clearer, more concise, and more readable they are, the more they will be used by other researchers and contribute to the advancement of knowledge. Improving your article should not be seen as something you are reluctantly doing for me, but rather as a way to better promote the work you have carried out.

In your response letter you state that “this article was conceived as a comprehensive overview”. This is perfectly fine; however, an event report also needs to be systematic, so that the reader is guided through the content and does not get lost. At present, there is no clear “template” for the description of the different case studies.

Each case study includes different types of information, presented in a different order (for instance, damage descriptions are sometimes embedded within geological descriptions), with several digressions and an excess of geological details that are not functional to the aims of the article. Please decide a number of figures (2?, 3?, 4?) for each case study and reserve the same number for ALL the case study, and figures must be grouped in a single one (as fig 22 for example) and be strictly related to the event, not historical, not literature images.

In my opinion, a clear effort is needed to homogenize and synthesize the case studies; otherwise, the reading becomes difficult and confusing.
Regarding the provinces, I do not see a figure that explicitly represents them. More generally, all the toponyms mentioned in the text should necessarily be shown on a map that the reader can refer to while reading. You should revise all cited place names and rain gauge stations and ensure that they are all located in at least one figure. This would greatly rationalize the disproportionate use of local toponyms.

• Lines 180–185: I do not think it is necessary to explain how the state of emergency works in Italy. Italian readers are already familiar with this, and for international readers it is sufficient to state that a state of emergency was declared, without detailing the entire bureaucratic procedure, which is out of place in a scientific article.
• Figure 6: Maps at a 1:25,000 scale are absolutely unsuitable for an international journal. Their level of detail prevents effective resizing, and in any case they are not directly relevant to your research objectives.
• Line 260: I understand that this aspect is interesting, but it is not directly related to the event itself. I would suggest removing this section together with the corresponding figure. These considerations and digressions are more appropriate for a technical report than for an international scientific article and tend to disrupt the narrative flow.
“The case study of Senigallia represents a very didactic example of studying anthropogenic modifications of the territory…”
• Figure 8: Either include the map itself or remove the figure altogether. Showing the list of layers and the menu bar has no scientific meaning.
• Figure 11: This figure is too large and too blurred in relation to the amount of information it provides. I suggest creating a small, clean map of the river network and incorporating it into the already large overview figure.
• Line 380: I would significantly shorten this section by focusing on the key points and avoiding excessive details related to data collection. At a European or global scale, listing all individual rain gauge stations is not meaningful.
• Discussion e conclusion: is excessively long and reads more like a detailed technical report than a synthesis suitable for an international scientific journal. I sussesto to split in discussion and conclusions and in conclusion the take home e messages must be highlighted. The current structure is confusing, as it mixes results, methodological details, event narration, modelling validation, literature review, and policy considerations without a clear hierarchy or progression. As a consequence, the key messages of the paper are diluted and difficult to identify.
• Many paragraphs reiterate information already presented in the Results section (e.g. hydrometric trends, rainfall return periods, modelling outputs), while others introduce new data, figures, or highly localised descriptions that should either be moved to earlier sections or substantially reduced. The discussion should not describe what happened in detail, but rather explain why it matters and what can be learned from it. Important conclusions (e.g. limits of structural measures, role of anthropization, relevance of natural flood expansion areas, need for monitoring and early warning systems) are mentioned multiple times but are not synthesised into a small number of well-defined conclusions or recommendations.
• “Thanks to hydrological-hydraulic modelling, it is now possible to know detailed flow rates and hydrometric levels in each section of the investigated catchment areas (aimed at dimensioning the reconstruction of bridges and other risk reduction interventions)” in my opinion this sentence is inappropriate for this paragraph
• Fig 27 and 29: are useless, pleas eliminate them
• 771-786 please, eliminate all these toponyms going to the sense of what you mean.
• Figura 32 e figura 33: please put in a single figure, and eliminate figure 34 that is not useful
• limit Discussion to a small number of thematic points (e.g. drivers of damage, performance and limits of hydraulic modelling, implications for risk management); removing detailed descriptions of single hydrometers, stations, graphs, or local anecdotes, which are not informative at the scale of an international readership;
• avoiding the introduction of new figures, analyses, or lengthy literature digressions in the Conclusions;
• concluding with a concise list of clear implications and recommendations (what this study adds compared to previous works, what it suggests for flood-risk management, and what its main limitations are).
I hope that this will help to improve your paper
best
Olga Petrucci