Identifying Cost-Effective Low-Impact Development (LID) under Climate Change: A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

the authors have responded well to my concerns, I agree to accept this paper in present form.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your prompt response! I appreciate your feedback to me so quickly.

Sincerely,
Yasir Abduljaleel
PhD candidate, Washington State University

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Hello Dear Authors

I reviewed your paper. You did a good job! I have only minor comments. Please apply them in the final version.

Thanks!

==================================

1. Don't use common words with the title's words in the "Keyword" section. So, please omit the repetitive words and present other words.

2. For all the tables, please remove "vertical lines"!

3.  Section 2.5 needs to summarize. It is so long!

4. The "Conclusions" section needs to summarize. One paragraph is good enough for this part. Please modify it.

5- Adding a supplementary section and transferring some details to this part is better. Most of the features need to summarize! For example, in sections 2.1, 3.2, and 3.5, All other sections are well-organized. 

6- It is better to clarify several terms in the supplementary section, such as "Pareto-optimal  front," "Genetic Algorithm," "crossover," "population," and all other words that you used in the "Optimization Algorithm."

Author Response

Thank you for the constructive critique and the opportunity to revise and resubmit the manuscript. My co-authors and I believe that the critical comments raised in the review process are addressed in the revised manuscript. Please find our detailed responses, explanations, and how we updated the manuscript in our response below. We have used blue italic fonts in both the response and manuscript to highlight our changes.

 

Sincerely,

Yasir Abduljaleel

PhD researcher, Washington State University

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The present paper aims to  develop  an integrated modeling and optimization framework that couples the SWMM and an optimization algorithm (MOGA) to assess the performance of commonly used LIDs and then identify hydrologically and cost-effective mixes of LIDS under both past and future scenario storm conditions in Renton City, WA. The subject is important and relevant to the Remote Sensing journal. The quality of the manuscript however should be improved significantly, so I would like to suggest a complete revision before submitting it again. Please find below my comments.

1-     What I most concerned about the manuscript is its novelty. Generally speaking, the  topic of this study is to assess the performance of commonly used LIDs, and cost-effective mixes of LIDS and all the methods applied here are from previous studies. Neither the topic nor the method is new. Therefore I recommend the authors to fully stress what is new in the study
(compared with previous works) and what new knowledge we can learn from their
results.

2-     The first problem with the manuscript is that it has not been compiled under your journal’s style and seems not to comply with its requirements on the number of figures and tables. I merely draw the editors’ attention to the issue but am not responsible for suggesting improvements. I guess the manuscript exceeds the word limit by a high margin.

3-     The manuscript tends to be elaborative and make a meal of the subject matter (this is true in Introduction, Data, Modelling strategy and the presentation of the results). Often, there is no structure in the arguments. I hasten to add that I am  complaining about  absence of structure and communication style, as a result of which it is easy to be bogged down most of the time. I would strongly recommend that the authors communicate the subject matter. For instance, consider the results. I would be keen to see that (i) the authors identify the structure in the figures and tables in the results section and marshal them in a logical succession; (ii) state each figure/table in a sentence or two; (iii) state clear information outright as a message, as deduced from the figure/table; and (iii) if necessary, qualify the main message. In this way the results will become more understandable. The Introduction section is related to what other people have done, whereas it should explain the authors' work in the context of the state-of-the-art.

 

4-     Frequent References to Sustainability: Frequent references to sustainability are made in the Abstract, and Conclusion sections (sustainable LIDs and sustainable stormwater management) but left me disappointed, as the citation to sustainability in the text was disconnected to the results and failed to show how this assessment is helping this study to improve sustainability. For this, there is a need for a sufficient amount of coverage for this catchment of the study area

 

5-     Please provide additional descriptive information for the basins such as   Hydrological and Flood Features , average slope, mean annual temperature, etc. At least, the reader must get some idea about the basic principles that are used to assess the different processes mentioned in passing. 

 

6-     The authors need to communicate the concepts and the results but not just write them in their normal way.

 

 

7-     In addition, I have a concern about the protocol authors implemented, which lacks s parameter uncertainty. The uncertainty of data and setting parameters has certain randomness, and there is always an inevitable forecast deviation. Please discuss the uncertainties Thus, the scarce information provided in this section in combination is misleading to the reader.

8-     Gap analysis needs to be made in relation to the study area but state if there is any limitation for the modelling strategy in applying to any other study area.

 

9-     In the conclusions section, the authors could have made a better effort to explain what is better understood in the case they presented better than general speaking

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for the constructive critique and the opportunity to revise and resubmit the manuscript. My co-authors and I believe that the critical comments raised in the review process are addressed in the revised manuscript. Please find our detailed responses, explanations, and how we updated the manuscript in our response below. We have used blue italic fonts in both the response and manuscript to highlight our changes. 

Sincerely,
Yasir Abduljaleel
PhD candidate, Washington State University

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

There are major improvements in the manuscript. Most comments appear to have been dealt with, especially clarification of the introduction, objectives, and explanation behind the sensitivity analysis, in addition to the discussion section.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

This paper evaluated the impacts of different LIDs on urban floods by considering the historical and future climate. The approach adopted in this study is reasonable and reliable, but I have several concerns:

 

l  Many cities are threatened by urban floods. Some cities have already built a lot of pumping stations, but they still suffered from floods during the rainy season. In many cases, the rising water level has overwhelmed pumping stations, as it is difficult to discharge flood water from urban areas to surrounding water bodies. Meanwhile, the sea level is rising significantly, and Seattle is a coastal city. Thus, is it necessary to consider the influence of the rising sea level? Besides, the authors used SSP585 as the future climate input. SSP585 is the worst case; the human government will not take any strategies to handle global warming, which means the largest increases in temperature and sea level.

 

l  Some of the LIDs are affected by antecedent rainfall, i.e., infiltration trench, and rain garden. How to set the initial condition in the model?

 

l  As I mentioned before, SSP585 is the worst scenario in CMIP6. In general, the increased temperature is corresponding to larger annual precipitation and storms. This opinion can also be approved by Fig. 9 in this paper. Why choose SSP585 only? Why not consider the low and middle scenarios, i.e., SSP126/245.

 

l  Fig. 10 and 11 are blurry.

 

 

Other suggestions (not related to this paper)

 

SWMM is not a comprehensive model for modeling urban floods. It does not consider the water exchange among different subbasins, and the water is retained near the junction waiting for entering the conduits. It is better to couple the model with DEM, to simulate the surface runoff and flooded regions. In this way, it can better evaluate the arrangement of LIDs in a city.

Reviewer 2 Report

Please specify  what is the difference of the present work with the study called "Evaluation and Optimization of Low Impact Development Designs for Sustainable Stormwater Management in a Changing Climate" published from the same authors in Water journal about a year ago? Two or three Figures are exactly the same.

Major Comments:

1. As a general observation, what is more problematic about this paper is scale mismatch. The authors reported that IDF curves were developed from sub-hourly (15 min) rainfall measurements. However, for one climate change scenario, using daily data, they developed future IDF curves. This is problematic and can result in extreme uncertainty of the final result, e.g., flood peaks, volumes etc. Temporal scale (daily) of GCMs and/or RCMs must not be used when adressing the impacts of climate change on urban drainage networks. Moreover, uncertainty of climate projections is not adressed nor discussed.

Finally, P.4 Lines 140-141  "there will be..."  there authors must be careful when reporting a statement. Future climate projections are just scenarios and not representations of a possible future.

Overall, present and future IDF curves are not comparable due to scale mismatch. The former are developed based on 15 min (time scale) data. The latter from daily. Which distribution was used for developing the IDF curves? Present and future are not comparable due to scale mismatch. 

2. Why not apply sensitivity analysis first to reduce the number of parameters needed for the optimization procedure? Please consider SAFE Toolbox (P. 2, Lines 95-96).

Moreover, P. 7, Lines 226-229: How? Manually? Again, why no sensitivity analysis first? How many events of rainfall-runoff? Sample statistics of the measurements must be presented in a Table or Figure. Objective Function of the calibration procedure? Validation?

3. Discussion is missing. Please compare your results with the results previously reported in the literature. Refer to the main drawbacks of the present work and/or to potential future work (e.g., uncertainty analysis GLUE)

 

4. Figure 9 is not of good quality and must be redrawn. Other figures can be merged (e.g, Fig 4 and 5).

 

Minor comments: 

-P. 2, Lines 45-46: Not all studies agrree in that. Mainly for storms with low probability of occurrence. Some examples are needed here,

-Eqs 4 and 5 are needed? Please consider removing them and just add references,

-Some references are not in the correct forma (e.g., 46),

-Fig. 8: Observed is a black line, not a grey one,

-Consider not using abbreviations for LID (e.g., IT etc.),

-Provide the equations for the developed IDF curves.