Enhancing flood hazard estimation methods on alluvial fans using an integrated hydraulic, geological and geomorphological approach

Mollaei, Zeinab; Davary, Kamran; Hasheminia, Seyed Majid; Faridhosseini, Alireza; Pourmohamad, Yavar

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1159-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1159-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1159-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 4

Research article

|

16 Apr 2018

Research article |

| 16 Apr 2018

Enhancing flood hazard estimation methods on alluvial fans using an integrated hydraulic, geological and geomorphological approach

Zeinab Mollaei, Kamran Davary, Seyed Majid Hasheminia, Alireza Faridhosseini, and Yavar Pourmohamad

Download

Final revised paper (published on 16 Apr 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 18 Jul 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Enhancing Flood Hazard Estimation Methods ..." by Mollaei et. al.', Jonathan Fuller, 25 Jul 2017
- SC1: 'Corresponding to Dr. J. Fuller', Seyed Majid Hasheminia, 11 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Dr. Fuller', Seyed Majid Hasheminia, 05 Nov 2017
RC2: 'comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Aug 2017
- SC2: 'Dear Referee #2', Seyed Majid Hasheminia, 11 Sep 2017
- AC2: 'Referee #2', Seyed Majid Hasheminia, 05 Nov 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (06 Nov 2017) by Mario Parise

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (22 Nov 2017) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Nov 2017) by Mario Parise

RR by Jonathan Fuller (29 Nov 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (01 Dec 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The paper deals with estimation of hazards on alluvial fans through an integrated approach. It is potentially of interest for the journal, but needs work before being fully considered for publication. This derives from reasons which I will try to delineate in the following (with further comments, questions and suggestions in the attached file)

In the initial part more references are needed, both to put the article in a broader international context, and to support the statements presented by Authors. Several suggestions are given in the attached file.
In particular, there are many articles which demonstrate the need to take into consideration the main features of the fan, from the morphological and geological standpoints; this is a very important point you make, which, however, must be supported by more international references.

Throughout the text, when quoting two or more references, these must be listed in chronological order.

The geomorphological characteristics of the fans are never presented in detail. This is a very weak point in the article, since does not allow the reader to evaluate the integrated approach you claim to use. A section showing the analysis of the geomorphological data on the three fans (possibily also comparing your study with similar previous ones) is necessary.

There is confusion in the use of the term risk and hazard. In my opinion, the correct term is hazard, even though this should include the temporal probability of occurrence, and in the article no chronological data of floods is provided. The term risk must be avoided, since you never deal with the social and economic analysis of the damage produced by floods.

The conclusions are very poor and brief. A wider discussion is needed, you cannot simply summarize results in a table, they need to be properly discussed in this section.

The reference list is quite poor, too, given the high amount of works available on the topic. I added a number of possible suggestions, but am sure there are many other works that might help .

As for references, there are many works available in the international literature that could be useful to better organize the article, and to put it in a more international context, as mentioned before. Below I list some suggestions:

Calcaterra, D., Parise, M., Palma, B., and Pelella, L.: Multiple debris flows in volcaniclastic materials mantling carbonate slopes, in: Proceedings 2nd International Conference on “Debris-Flow Hazards Mitigation: Mechanics, Prediction, and Assessment”, Taiwan, edited by: Wieczorek, G. F. and Naeser, N. D., 99–107, 2000.
Calcaterra, D., Parise, M., and Palma, B.: Combining historical and geological data for the assessment of the landslide hazard: a case study from Campania, Italy, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 3, 3–16, doi:10.5194/nhess-3-3-2003, 2003.
Calcaterra, D., Coppin, D., de Vita, S., Di Vito, M. A., Orsi, G., Palma, B., and Parise, M.: Slope processes in weathered volcaniclastic deposits within the city of Naples: the Camaldoli Hill case, Geomorphology, 87, 132–157, 2007.
Coe, J. A., Godt, J. W., Parise, M., and Moscariello, A.: Estimating debris-flow probability using fan stratigraphy, historic records, and drainage-basin morphology, Interstate 70 highway corridor, central Colorado, U.S.A., in: Proc. 3rd International Conference on Debris-Flow Hazards Mitigation: Mechanics, Prediction, and Assessment, Davos (Switzerland), 2, 1085–1096, 2003.
Garfi, G., Bruno, D., Calcaterra, D., and Parise, M.: Fan morphodynamics and slope instability in the Mucone River basin (Sila Massif, southern Italy): significance of weathering and role of land use changes, Catena, 69, 181–196, 2007.
Gaume, E., Bain, V., Bernardara, P., Newinger, O., Barbuc, M., Bateman, A., Blaškoviˇcová, L., Blöschl, G., Borga, M., Dumitrescu A., Daliakopoulos, I., Garcia, J., Irimescu, A., Kohnova, S., Koutroulis, A., Marchi, L., Matreata, S., Medina, V., Preciso, E., Sempere-Torres, D., Stancalie, G., Szolgay, J., Ioannis Tsanis, I., Velasco, D., and Viglione, D.: A compilation of data on European flash floods, J. Hydrol., 367, 70–78, 2009.
Gaume, E., Grunfest, E., Naulin, J.-P., Payrastre, O., and Vannier, O.: Social and hydrological responses to extrem precipitations: an interdisciplinary strategy for postflood investigation, Weather Clim. Soc., 6, 135–153, 2014.
Merheb, M., Moussa, R., Abdallah, C., Colin, F., Perrin, C., and Baghdadi, N.: Hydrological response characteristics of Mediterranean catchments at different time scales: a meta-analysis, Hydrolog. Sci. J., 61, 2520–2539, doi:10.1080/02626667.2016.114017, 2016.
Santangelo, N., Daunis-i-Estadella, J., Di Crescenzo, G., Di Donato, V., Faillace, P., Martin-Fernandez, J. A., Romano, P., Santo, A., and Scorpio, V.: Topographic predictors of susceptibility to alluvial fan flooding, Southern Apennines, Earth Surf. Proc. Land., 37, 803–817, doi:10.1002/esp.3197, 2012.
Santo, A., Santangelo, N., Di Crescenzo, G., Scorpio, V., De Falco, M., and Chirico, G. B.: Flash flood occurrence and magnitude assessment in an alluvial fan context: the October 2011 event in the Southern Apennines, Nat. Hazards, 78, 417–442, 2015.
Vennari C., Santangelo N., Santo A. & Parise M., 2016. A database on flash flood events in Campania, southern Italy, with an evaluation of their spatial and temporal distribution. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, vol. 16, p. 2485-2500.

For all the above reasons, I recommend major revision for the manuscript in its present form, and hope that my suggestions could be useful to the Authors to prepare a revised version of the work.

Referee Report: PDF

Hide

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (01 Dec 2017) by Mario Parise

AR by Svenja Lange on behalf of the Authors (22 Feb 2018) Author's response

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (22 Feb 2018) by Mario Parise

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (28 Feb 2018) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (28 Feb 2018) by Mario Parise

Short summary

This study was conducted on three alluvial fans located in Iran using a combination of the FAN model, the hydraulic portion of the FLO-2D model and geomorphological information. Initial stages included three steps: (a) identifying the alluvial fans' landforms, (b) determining the active and inactive areas of alluvial fans, and (c) delineating 100-year flood within these selected areas. The goal of this research was to introduce a simple but effective solution to estimate the flood hazards.