OGRS2016 reviewer report
Name of the reviewer Stefan STEINEGER, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Title of the Short Paper LISAM: an open source GIS-based model for liveability spatial assessment
Does the submission provide adequate motivation and interesting conclusions? Fair
Does the submission address a challenging or new theoretical/practical issue? Yes
Does the submission present a new approach to an issue or does it put forward a novel combination of existing ideas or techniques? Yes
Is the submission technically sound? Fair
Are the results clearly described and critically evaluated? Fair
Is the submission clearly written and logically structured? Fair
Does the submission correctly situate itself within the context of existing research literature? Good
Is the paper closely related to OGRS scope with a content interesting to the OGRS attendees (geospatial research and/or education) ? Good
Does the submission aptly argue the open source approach ? Fair
What is the dominant among the below elements of typology? The contribution is rather thematic, that is to say mainly addresses a case study
I recommend the contribution for an oral presentation but not for the publication in PeerJ Computer Science
Comments for the authors "The work on accessibility is interesting, and I am working on something similar. There are however a couple of things that I don't understand - which is probably also a available space issue:
- Table 1: what are aesthetical services? -> example
- Table 1 Viewshed analysis: it is not described how this works etc, but from the short description that is given in the table it does not make sense to me (yet) to use a viewshed analysis
- EL: although it is described in the text, I don't understand what EL is, nor how it is calculated.
- It is also not clear to me how and WHY you apply IDW to EL (an image would help?).
- Figure 2: ""Class weights"" : For/From what classes? any examples?
- Figure 2: What is division 3.3? A region in Italy?
- Table 2: classification: If this Normal distribution-based classification makes sense can be only said when the distribution is know (e.g. for cartography/visualization reasons I often use a Jenks classification). I.e. is your data normal distributed?
- Results: ""perecived liveability"": How was this data obtained? Any map?
- Results: ""So, liveability values become higher where anthropogenic features related to US occurs"" => well this idea forms actually the basic assumption of Walkscore.com (or WalkYourPlace) etc.
- Conclusions:
-- you write ""...which could help to overcome the difficulties related to the introduction of the ES approach in local landscape planning..."" => But just one sentence before you said that all the 24 indicators not implemented are ES services. So, how can you conclude this yet?
-- ""sacked"" => ""pointed out""
-- you write ""The reported results clearly highlight also the urgency of define more affordable ES accessibility indicators as well as ecosystem and urban disservices"" => What are affordable ES? => Although I fully agree with introducing ""urban disservices"" the results don't highlight/indicate this for me. So, you may rephrase this.
- The abstracts English needs revision. The english of the text itself is much better, but I found 2-3 spelling/grammar errors (ej. 43 of 67 services, manly -> mainly)"
Overall index of quality of the manuscript from 0 (poor quality) to 10 (good quality), passing from 5 (fair quality) 6
Answers from Authors to Reviewer comments
- Table 1: what are aesthetical services? > example
An example has been added to the table
- Table 1 Viewshed analysis: it is not described how this works etc, but from the short description that is given in the table it does not make sense to me (yet) to use a viewshed analysis
More information has been added to the table to clarify this point
- EL: although it is described in the text, I don't understand what EL is, nor how it is calculated. It is also not clear to me how and WHY you apply IDW to EL (an image would help?).
The related sentences have been reworded in order to clarify these points.
- Figure 2: ""Class weights"" : For/From what classes? any examples? Figure 2: What is division 3.3? A region in Italy?
To address this issue the caption was reworded. The final part now reads as follow: “subscript indicates codes of service classes included in division 3.3 of LIAM classification.”
- Table 2: classification: If this Normal distribution based classification makes sense can be only said when the distribution is know (e.g. for cartography/visualization reasons I often use a Jenks classification). I.e. is your data normal distributed?
Yes, the final output is normally distributed. We have indicated this in the related text.
- Results: ""perecived liveability"": How was this data obtained? Any map?
Taking in consideration service weights calculated using stakeholders’ preferences, as indicated in methods section, the output can be considered as a “perceived liveability”.
- Results: ""So, liveability values become higher where anthropogenic features related to US occurs"" => well this idea forms actually the basic assumption of Walkscore.com (or WalkYourPlace) etc.
Interesting similarity, thanks.
- Conclusions: you write ""...which could help to overcome the difficulties related to the introduction of the ES approach in local landscape planning..."" => But just one sentence before you said that all the 24 indicators not implemented are ES services. So, how can you conclude this yet?
The overall effectiveness of the approach for landscape planning is not related to difficulties in calculating some ES indicators.
- ""sacked"" => ""pointed out""
Corrected, thanks.
- you write ""The reported results clearly highlight also the urgency of define more affordable ES accessibility indicators as well as ecosystem and urban disservices"" => What are affordable ES? => Although I fully agree with introducing ""urban disservices"" the results don't highlight/indicate this for me. So, you may rephrase this.
To address this point the sentence was reworded
- The abstracts English needs revision. The english of the text itself is much better, but I found 2 - 3 spelling/grammar errors (ej. 43 of 67 services, manly > mainly)"
A final revision and spell-check of all the paper has been performed.
