A GIS-Based Evacuation Route Planning in Flood-Susceptible Area of Siraha Municipality, Nepal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting paper on flood susceptibility mapping and evacuation route planning. The overall methodology used for arriving at the susceptibility maps is well described. However, the process of arriving at the weights using AHP seemed to be missing some details. Normally, expert opinion is solicited in arriving at the weights for each of the different spatial variables. It is not clear how this was done. 

The evacuation route planning assumes that roads that are not flooded/ less flooded would be useable by pedestrians from the assembly points to the shelters. However, landslides, washouts and bridge damage may affect the potential routes and therefore need to be factored into the planning as well. In addition, provisions for persons who are physically challenged may also need consideration.    

Most of the paper is reasonably well written. However, there are few instances where the words used may not be the correct one:

1. Line 64 - "accessing"..flood should be "assessing" flood

2. Line 209 - river network should be road network

3. line 296 - instead of " Well checked" I suggest "thoroughly checked"  or "carefully checked"

4. Line 302 - Should that be "transportation" instead of "transformation"

5. Line 327. Not too sure which figure to which you are referring.

6. Line 351 - suggest you use "categorised" instead of "sub-divided"

7. Line 353 - suggest you use "weight" instead of "weightage" 

8. Line 381 - Not too sure which figure to which you are referring

9. Line 435 - there is an extra R. in the reference Dewi [63]

10. Line 444 - Should this be "which" instead of "while"?

I would suggest a careful review of the paper. 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for the comments and your valuable time towards out manuscript. Please find the attachment for the detailed responses and changes to the manuscript.

Sincerely, 

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The presented paper combines GIS approaches to multicriteria flood hazard analysis and evacuation route optimization. Given the geographic area, it is understandable that the authors had limited spatial data availability. The paper is an interesting attempt to combine the above-mentioned geoinformation analyses on a specific territory and to create a basis usable in a particular crisis situation. However, I have the following conceptual comments, which limit the possibility of publication.

The authors performed a multicriteria analysis using nine criteria without a proper justification. The availability of spatial data is not sufficient justification, and I consider using similar or identical criteria in other research to be only partial justification. The text states that the assessed area has been flooded repeatedly in the recent past with disastrous consequences. Is it possible to validate the research results with the actual extent of flooding? For considering the importance of research, it would be helpful to test the potential sensitivity of individual factors with actual flood extents and then adjust their weight or omission in the calculation.

My second comment is on the extent of the spatial data used.  The maps presented show results only within the boundaries of the administrative area of Siraha Municipality. Given the proximity of the Kamala River, I do not consider it correct to limit the analysis to the administrative area. The results are then heavily influenced by the limited extent of the data. If the scope of the data used was broader, please indicate in the text.

 

Besides, I doubt the relevance of combining susceptibility mapping and evacuation routes/areas. A brief discussion about the differences between susceptibility, vulnerability, hazard, and risk mapping would be helpful in the introduction session. In my opinion, the risk mapping would better fit the context of the article and elaborate the connection between the potential losses and damages caused by flooding (considering both human lives and buildings) and possible civil protection actions (evacuations of people). 

Author Response

Dear reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for the comments and your valuable time towards out manuscript. Please find the attachment for the detailed responses and changes to the manuscript.

Sincerely, 

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of manuscript "A GIS-Based Evacuation Route Planning in Flood Susceptible Area of Siraha Municipality, Nepal" (ijgi-2387676)

Dear authors, your research aims to provide a comprehensive flood susceptibility and evacuation route mapping in the Siraha Municipality of Nepal. The flood susceptibility map was created using a Geographic Information System-based Analytical Hierarchy Process over nine flood conditioning factors. It is a well-prepared manuscript and fits the aims and scope of the journal topic. Nevertheless, the authors need to highlight the soundness and novelty of their research as compared with previous research. Therefore, a substantial revision is necessary to improve this manuscript. Specifically, the reviewer has the following comments and suggestions:

(1) It is unreasonable that the authors directly mentioned the detailed conditions of the study area at the very first parts of the Introduction Section. These parts should be mentioned in the second section, i.e., Materials and Methods. In fact, these parts should be substantially condensed into one or two small paragraphs.

(2) The Abstract and Introduction Section: overall, these two parts are not strong because the authors did not highlight the necessity and novelty of this study from an international perspective. As a consequence, reviewers cannot figure out why this research must be performed in this context. If this research just presented a case study in a particular region, namely, the Siraha Municipality in Nepal, then it lacks enough novelty for publishing in this internationally distinguished journal (IJGI). I would like to remind that these several flood models and route planning models were not new in flood susceptibility research.

(3) Actually, the three "objectives" of this manuscript are only related to this specific study area. In other words, these objectives have been fulfilled by previous research in other study areas.

(4) At the end of the Introduction, the authors have mentioned several studies related to flood susceptibility mapping, but without mentioning the disadvantages of these studies (below).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2020.100704

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2022.100260

(5) Table 1. Description of data sources used in this study: I am missing the detailed data maps for these datasets. In addition, what is/are the year(s) and accuracies of these datasets?

(6) The Literature Part: in this part, the authors need to look further into the relevant research about flood susceptibility mapping. In particular, some advanced methods have been largely used in flooding susceptibility assessment (please find below). Nevertheless, these new methods were ignored in this manuscript. A thorough literature review is meant to set the context for your research work and highlight how it contributes to the knowledge in this field and builds on previous relevant research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.103812

https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2017.1316780

(7) In Section 2.3. Flood Susceptibility Evaluation and Flood Conditioning Factors, all these factors were categorized into five different classes on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 refers to very low flood risk while 5 refers to very high flood risk, please explain clearly the reasons and support. In other words, how to reasonably define the different ranges and weights in Table 2.

(8) Table 4. Pair-wise comparison matrix: please explain clearly these results were provided based on which expert(s).

(9) The discussion and conclusion should be better separated into two sections.

(10) The authors also need to improve the Conclusion part by clarifying the main shortages of your work.

Extensive editing of English language required.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 3,

Thank you very much for the comments and your valuable time towards out manuscript. Please find the attachment for the detailed responses and changes to the manuscript.

Sincerely, 

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for considering my comments and for editing the manuscript extensively. I have a brief note about the statement concerning the extent of the territory analysed and its limitation to administrative boundaries. To achieve a better (more realistic) result, it is not necessary to use the whole river basin; it is sufficient to extend the input data for the entire river floodplain. However, I am willing to accept your explanation based on Nepal's current state of methodological approaches.

I have the following comments on the second version of the manuscript:

 

Could you give the percentage of the common ground of both highly susceptible and past flooded areas? What is the quantitative value for "mostly"?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for the acknowledgement of our responses. We very much appreciate your valuable time and constructive comments that greatly improved the quality of our manuscript.

Please find the attachment for the response to the two comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate the authors' efforts to improve this manuscript. Now it is acceptable for publication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3, Thank you very much for the acknowledgement of our responses. We very much appreciate your valuable time and constructive comments that greatly improved the quality of our manuscript.