Dear colleagues,

as you have seen we received comments of two referees who have considerable aspects related to the clarity and content of your presentation. Moreover, in your public answers you did not entirely clear explain how you would like to address these shortcomings, instead, and in particular with respect to one report, you were only explaining what the general ideas of your study were (see also general guidelines of NHESS: https://www.natural-hazards-and-earth-system-sciences.net/peer_review/interactive_review_process.html).
So I kindly would like to encourage you to (1) undertake necessary adjustments of your manuscript, and (2) to carefully consider the items raised by the referees in an author response file. Once received, I will circulate the manuscript for another round of reviews. This of course means that if there still remain considerable shortcomings, the work still can be rejected.
Best regards, and good success with your works,

Sven Fuchs (Editor NHESS)

Dear colleagues

Again, thanks a lot for submitting your revised version of manuscript # 2018-100 to NHESS.
Going through both of the referee’s reports again, and comparing the versions of the manuscript as well as your response to the comments I can see that you made considerable improvements as suggested by the referees.
Irrespectively of the new referee comment # 1, which is according to my understanding not very target-oriented, and based on my judgement of your manuscript I have the following remarks:
- The manuscript could gain in clarity if you insert a small paragraph in the methods section explaining how the ranking was performed – this is not entirely clear to me at the present state, in particular the issue of how the different sets (1-3) are ranked among each other, but also within the individual sets of indicators. The description in lines 282-288 just shows that a relative ranking was undertaken, but not how this was done (see also comments of referee #1 on your initial manuscript version).
- In general, your literature is a bit too narrow focusing on Italian fellows and case studies. For the international reader, you could also mention other studies on flood hazard processes applying MCA techniques, such as described in Meyer et al. (2009), chapter 1.2.
- Line 219: please provide reference: Commission of the European Communities (2007)
- Line 234: To me it is not clear how these risk levels were defined, and this becomes not even clearer if we consult the website of the Region of Liguria (http://srvcarto.regione.liguria.it/geoviewer/pages/apps/ambienteinliguria/mappa.html?id=1725&ambiente=I), here the distinction also is only “Rischio moderato o nullo, medio, elevato, and molto elevato” – moreover, if exposure or characteristics of elements at risk are meant, this could not be “risk” as defined as hazard x vulnerability x exposure.
- Line 239: Aversa et al. (2016): the reference is incomplete, and refers to a two-volume edited proceeding with over 2000 pages where I doubt that all the contributions are centered on the use of Melton ratios. It may be more target-oriented to cite Journal Articles here, e.g., Scheidl and Rickenmann (2010), Totschnig et al. (2011) or the nice overview of morphometric features by Wilford et al. (2004).
- Line 337 ff.: How can we understand the following sentence: “But by leaving a qualitative approach for the quantitative one that is obtained by the application of the S-MCA techniques to compare the catchments’ conditions, some more meaningful results may be obtained.” – needs some clarification.
- Line 345 ff.: “A further calculation has 345 been performed assuming proportional weights to the elements to risk factors, that is giving a major importance to the higher risk level respect to the lower ones.” – Should go to the methods section together with an explanation of how the ranking was performed, please see my comments above.
- Finally, I kindly would like to suggest a bit more information on risk mitigation planning – this suggests the title but it is not mirrored by your results and discussion section. Alternatively, you may wish to change the title of your manuscript.

In order to give you the opportunity for the improvements discussed, I decided for minor revisions before acceptance of your work. When uploading the revised version please also include a step-by-step response to the items.
I wish you good success with your work.

Kind regards, Sven Fuchs (Editor NHESS)

References mentioned:
Commission of the European Communities: Directive 2007/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2007 on the assessment and management of flood risks, Official Journal of the European Union, L 288, 27-34, 2007.
Meyer, V., Scheuer, S., and Haase, D.: A multicriteria approach for flood risk mapping exemplified at the Mulde river, Germany, Natural Hazards, 48, 17-39, 2009.
Scheidl, C., and Rickenmann, D.: Empirical prediction of debris-flow mobility and deposition on fans, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 35, 157-173, 2010.
Totschnig, R., Sedlacek, W., and Fuchs, S.: A quantitative vulnerability function for fluvial sediment transport, Natural Hazards, 58, 681-703, 2011.
Wilford, D., Sakals, M., Innes, J., Sidle, R., and Bergerud, W.: Recognition of debris flow, debris flood and flood hazard through watershed morphometrics, Landslides, 1, 61-66, 2004.

Dear colleagues,

I would like to inform you that your manuscript finally has been accepted for publication in NHESS. Again, thanks for your collaboration during the entire evaluation and revision process.

Best regards,

Sven Fuchs (Editor NHESS)