Economic assessment of precautionary measures against  floods: insights from a non-contextual approach

Richert, Claire; Boisgontier, Hélène; Grelot, Frédéric

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-2525-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-2525-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-2525-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

Research article

|

19 Nov 2019

Research article |

| 19 Nov 2019

Economic assessment of precautionary measures against floods: insights from a non-contextual approach

Claire Richert, Hélène Boisgontier, and Frédéric Grelot

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Final revised paper (published on 19 Nov 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Jun 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review: “Economic assessment of measures aimed at reducing flood damage to buildings using computer modelling and expert judgement”', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Jul 2019
- AC1: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #1', Claire Richert, 26 Jul 2019
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Jul 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #2', Claire Richert, 26 Jul 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (12 Aug 2019) by Kai Schröter

Dear Claire Richert, Hélène Boisgontier and Frédéric Grelot,

thank you very much again for your submission 'Economic assessment of measures aimed at reducing flood damage to buildings using computer modelling and expert judgement' and your responses to the reviewers' comments.

Both referees acknowledge that you address a relevant topic which is of interest to the readers of NHESS. However, both reviewers raise concerns regarding the novelty of your approach and the innovation that is achieved.
As suggested by both reviewers these points need to be made much more clear in the title, abstract, introduction and conclusions.
Also the applicability of the scientific findings needs to be emphasized and demonstrated more in depth.

Both reviewers provided detailed reports highlighting all the points you should address in the revisions. According to your responses, I am positive about the new version of the manuscript and that you will take up their remarks and implement the necessary changes.

Please also note that this decision does not necessarily imply acceptance of the manuscript in the journal NHESS, and it still will depend on your reply (and subsequent edits to your manuscript), as well as on the reviewer comments of the revised version.

Please provide a joint revised marked up (track changes) version of your initial manuscript to make clear how you include the changes in response to both referees. Please ensure consistency in e.g. figure numbering in this version. Additionally, you have to upload the new version of the manuscript.

If you have any question regarding the procedure or interpretation of the comments, please do not hesitate to contact me for clarification.

I look forward to receiving the revised version of your manuscript.

Best regards
Kai Schröter

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AR by Claire Richert on behalf of the Authors (03 Sep 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (12 Sep 2019) by Kai Schröter

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (27 Sep 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This version of the manuscript is an improvement over the original one. The key issues raised regarding the original version have been, for the most part, addressed by the authors. I believe the article can be published following minor revisions.

General comments:
My main remaining criticism continues to relate to how the floodam model is presented, and its role within this article. While I agree that floodam is "only a tool to analyise the cost-efficiency of some precautionary measures" (quoting the authors), the results that are presented obviously depend on the assumptions and structure of the model that is adopted. Therefore, I believe this is a critical point of the article that deserves particular attention.
Although floodam does have a well structured English manual, this manual does not appear to go into too much detail, putting more emphasis on the general methodology. The model code itself is not publicly available, and as far as I understand floodam has not been validated based on real data or peer-reviewed. Also, P6 L8 states that floodam is based on 431 elementary functions. This level of detail is then presented as an advantage over other models. However, in my opinion this is a somewhat unsupported statement, because the model is not available for review and no proof is given of the predictive skill of these functions or the model as a whole.
To conclude: I suppose floodam has limitations - as does any model - and I also suppose it does not address all the unresolved issues in flood loss modelling. If that is the case, I believe this is something that should be discussed in the article, possibly in Section 5.4. In particular, how can possible model limitations affect the conclusions that the authors have drawn in the article regarding these precautionary measures?

Minor comments:
P1 L20: Exposure does not relate to population exclusively, but to any element at risk. Please correct accordingly.
P9 L15: I found the use of “contextualized dwelling” a bit confusing here. For clarity, please add an explanation of what this means.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (29 Sep 2019)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Oct 2019) by Kai Schröter

AR by Claire Richert on behalf of the Authors (09 Oct 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (17 Oct 2019) by Kai Schröter

Short summary

To limit the losses due to floods, people can adopt measures to protect their dwellings. We assessed the cost and efficacy of such measures using computer modelling. We found that the benefits of most of the measures studied are unlikely to exceed their cost when they are taken in dwellings that are not exposed to frequent floods (probability of occurrence of less than 1 / 100 per year). It is also often less expensive to use building materials adapted to floods than other common materials.