Failure Mode and Effects Analysis of Accessibility in Frigid Zone Campus Buildings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors:

First of all, congratulations nice job. Nonetheless, some corrections should be made.

Generally speaking, the redaction should be more direct and sharper, and a revision of the English language should be done too.

Firstly, it would be advisable that the title should be more specific and shorter, and it is possible not to use acronyms.

Secondly, the abstract should show the main conclusion.

Thirdly, as for the introduction, the problems of accessibility are identified and scarcely described, it would be advisable to be more descriptive about the problems of accessibility of the students to the university campus. Nonetheless, the aims are identified properly.

Fourthly, regarding the literature review I feel that provides sufficient background except when it is mentioned that ‘Some of the literature examines accessibility design from a legal and regulatory 87 standpoint, while just a few studies delve into the micro level, conducting research and evaluation on internal accessibility facilities’, please write the most important bibliographic reference for each level. Another point to consider is in section 2.2. Campus Accessibility regarding the way of citing references by using the name of the authors and then []. Also, there are typographic mistakes such as assess-ing…etc. Please in more detail ‘Nevertheless, the article contained insufficient data and lacked precision in evaluating accessibility.’ and ‘Based on the current body of research, fuzzy-FMEA, which is an expanded version 195 of FMEA, has been thoroughly assessed for its suitability in various domains’.

Fifthly, as for methodology I wonder how it was determined the minimum individuals who should be surveyed, please explain it and another question who composed the research team? why was used equation 2 instead of another one? Be careful, ‘Eqution’ instead of Equation.

Sixthly, it is worth noting that is very difficult to know how the results are obtained based on the methodology used. For this reason, please explain in more detail how it is the relationship between the methodology and the results obtained and the consequences explained in this section. Please be careful this section is not the discussion or conclusion.

Eighthly, as for the conclusion and specifically the experts’ conclusions, from my point of view, they are very predictable and also that the old campuses have worse conditions of accessibility than the new ones. Please be sharper and it is possible to mention more conclusions.  

Finally, the discussion section should be rewritten, due to the fact that when it comes to the discussion this section should interpret and extrapolate the results.

Yours faithfully.

Kind regards,

Dear Authors:

A revision of the English language should be done and modified.

Yours faithfully.

Kind regards,

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The presented research is interesting with a complete methodological approach and an original subject. The authors are invited to take into account the following clarifications and comments:

Section 2.1. Lines 72-75: More information is needed on the parameters of inclusion/exclusion in the literature review and how the articles presented in the rest of the section were selected.

Section 2.3. Lines 174-176: It would be useful to elaborate more on the limitations of the conventional FMEA approach to understand how the fuzzy-FMEA addresses them.

Section 2. In general, the added value of the fuzzy-FMEA method and its suitability and advantages for the overall assessment processes and the particular subject should be explained in a straightforward manner.

Section 3.1. Lines 211-212 and Figure 1: The titles of the steps should be appropriately introduced in the Figure and it is not necessary to mention in the text. Moreover, the titles of the steps and the titles mentioned in the text are not the same.

Section 3.3. Table 1: The difference between the attributed weights of different expert groups could be discussed.

Section 3.3. Lines 276-277 and elsewhere: It is Equation not Eqution.

Section 4.4. Lines 427-430. Using the future tense, the course of action in the section is not clear as to what has been done and what needs to be done.

Sections 5 and 6. The structure and titling of these sections are somewhat unconventional. The summary and discussion of findings (as presented in 6.1) usually precedes the conclusions of the research, where, apart from the overall takings and lessons learned, the limitations and future prospects are presented (as presented in 6.2).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper describes a methodology for the evaluation of accessibility applied to university campuses. Two different campuses (one old and one new) have been considered.

The most innovative aspects compared to the literature are related to the methodology that is based on FMEA for a comprehensive ranking and assessment of priority levels and also integrates fuzzy elements to take into account human imprecision.

The literature review covers various aspects related to accessibility research. Surveys on the same topic could be added:

https://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/40672
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10209-021-00843-x

The number of analyzed buildings and the number of interviewed individuals with disabilities residing on campus are limited but I think that these numbers are acceptable for an initial study, providing a basis for methodology development that can be replicated in other contexts.

I appreciated the identification of issues that are unique to cold climates, thus showing the importance of conducting similar studies in different countries, and the fact that you collected insights from different kinds of experts.

Other sections of the paper, such as the comparison between old and new buildings, appear less interesting. Enhancing the discussion around these differences could yield more actionable insights.

Regarding the structure, it might be more conventional to place the Discussion section before the Conclusions section to ensure a logical flow of ideas.

Some minor comments follow:

-       Line 302: fix Eqution into Equation

-       Improve the readability of Table 4 (consider landscape orientation)

-       Line 357 and 360: there is a repeated use of “regarding accessibility”; probably the second occurrence is wrong. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf