PCLM-D-24-00066

How are Indian cities adapting to extreme heat? Insights on heat risk governance and incremental adaptation from ten urban Heat Action Plans

PLOS Climate

Dear Chandni,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Executive Editor

PLOS Climate

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1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I don't know

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: • It is a good read but loose synthesis somehow. Looks like work in progress in two fronts.

• Need serious revision and structuring of the paper.

• Page 2- number of deaths by heatwaves- where? Globally, in India or 10 cities ?

• Just the map shows 10 city level HAP, it will be good to list/summarize city-level HAP- what are they?

• Need more details on 25 interviews- it amounts to 2.5 per city? Is it credible enough for research?

• There is a table in supplementary information. Delhi and Vadodara =0?, Bhubaneswar =5, why?

• Who are they their location- cities- It affect the whole research process

• Need more elaboration on research methodology and approach

• The research does not consider the view of the vulnerable affected by the heat- this is serious shortcoming of the research.

• There are some abbreviations used in parenthesis= are they codes for the respondents. Need explanation somewhere.

• Page 16, table 2, title says eight cities, but the table includes 10 cities-?

• Your conclusion seems obvious- pointing out reactive and incremental planning and key three takeaways – i. Need to develop localised temperature thresholds cities; ii. focus on short-term incremental solutions; and iii. inadequate and fragmented adaptation plan.

• The paper falls short of suggesting what would be a good governance structure for city heat risk planning and management, however it suggest -suggest “multi-scalar and transdisciplinary capacity building”?

• Reference style, et all, need consistency of style- use different style, years missing in some

• Include DOI for references as far as available- many missing

• et al., in references= need all authors details

• Publication year is mentioned as (2023) or just 2019 – no consistent formatting and placement of year at different places

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

thank you very much for your submission with the title “How are Indian cities adapting to extreme heat? Insights on heat risk governance and incremental adaptation from ten urban Heat Action Plans” to the journal Plos Climate. I would suggest to have a major re-thought about the paper: how it structured and presented.

Some major aspects:

Research question/introduction: I don’t see this as a very innovative question: what’s the new part? What’s the actual gap in the literature? What’s your theoretical framework you are using and why you are using it etc.? I would reconsider your introduction not to focus only on your case of India, but including a broader more theoretical discourse; showing what are actually the gaps of the ongoing urban governance debate. Further, the research questions needs to re-written to actually answer the gap in the literature.

Theoretical framework: the theoretically section isn’t really written within a strong critical reflection; it reads very much as a descriptive summary of the ongoing literature in adaptation governance. What’s actually transformational agenda – this isn’t really addressed in the section; what do you mean? What are the pro/cons of the concept? I would like to suggest to re-think your theoretical concept section to focus more on the aspect of transformational agenda within adaptive governance; to provide a critical reflection about it. About figure 2: what’s the new – the conceptual framework reads more like what we already know as well as the transformative part reads very much very classical-conservative.

Method: here, we need to know much for in detail: whom do you ask? Selection process? Why these cities? Coding tree? Which questions did you ask – more than the IPCC guidelines? Which policy documents did you analysed? How did you analyse them? How did you code the policy documents?

Results section: in particular, part 4.1-4.3 is very descriptive. I would re-think to remove some parts into the case study description or within an annex and to focus more on the interview results. Here, I’m missing an analytical perspective more than describing which city falls under which category.

Discussion section: this needs to be re-written, at the moment it reads like a summary and not a discussion in sense of how your results are linked within the literature and how your paper contribute to the ongoing literature. What’s actually the theoretical added-value of your paper?

Some minor aspects:

->the abstract needs to be re-written. First of all, the aim of the paper isn’t well written; some sentences needs to be re-consider, such as “This is promising”, I know it’s starting becoming more useful within academic papers, but this reads too ordinary; theoretical framework isn’t really describe and what are the main contribution of your paper to the ongoing literature/theoretical discussion; as well as what are the next policy recommendation/outlooks.

->keywords: you are using the term disaster governance – why? Why not risk governance?

->figure 1: I wouldn’t put it in the introduction; it should be moved towards the generally description of the policy system in India (e.g., method or first sub-section of the result-section)

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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How are Indian cities adapting to extreme heat? Insights on heat risk governance and incremental adaptation from ten urban Heat Action Plans

PCLM-D-24-00066R1

Dear Dr Singh,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'How are Indian cities adapting to extreme heat? Insights on heat risk governance and incremental adaptation from ten urban Heat Action Plans' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Jamie Males

Executive Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):