Identification of Urban Functional Regions Based on Floating Car Track Data and POI Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Although authors tried to present a good manuscript but there are a lot of issues which must be resolved before publication. The main problem is with the presentation and the organization of the paper. I have the following comments and suggestions to improve further:

Abstract:

What is POI? Point of Interest? I suggest don't use acronyms in the abstract - start from the introduction section. here mention complete words. Authors should use properly i.e. firstly, secondly,..., and finally - review the text at line no. 23. Add a sentence before sentence starting from Firstly ... Authors can remove the last sentence of the abstract section.

Introduction:

Although the authors described the problem background but I suggest authors should focus on the motivation and the contributions of the paper. Authors should describe the main objectives and goals of conducted research. Review the 2nd-last paragraph of the introduction section. Add a new paragraph for the organization of the paper - at the end of the introduction.  

Literature Review:

In the submitted paper, the literature in the introduction section is considered as weak. I suggest adding a separate section for the literature and more latest references should be added. 

Materials and Methods

the explicit description (maybe a para or more) is required at the start of this section /  before the main components. describe POI data in detail - what actually is ... In methods - explicit description is required - the main problem of this section is the problem-definition is missing. Different approaches are used to solve what ?? explicit details are required.  authors should review the titles of the sub-headings of this section. The main problem is with the organization of the paper and a lot of efforts are required to improve this section. (suggestion) Authors can divide this section into two: problem and the solution domains.  If authors focus on the methodology then they should describe the data in the experiments and result section.

Results

the result section is also considered as a poor section - more and clear description is required. the problem is in the presentation and writing. 

Discussion and Conclusion

I suggest adding discussion at the end of the results section and also provide a critical reflection of the paper. Currently, the conclusion is very extensive. Provide the real conclusion of the paper. 

Scan whole paper for the English grammatical and spell mistakes

Author Response

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, your paper is providing a method for urban planning and analysis. There are some issues that have to be addressed.

Please, begin the abstract in a different way. Do not begin with ”With…” Sustainability is a journal which refers to a global audience but still the majority of your references in the introduction is from researchers from China. You have to give paradigms from the rest of the world. Please provide some more details about the study area and the specific local reasons you based on in order to choose it as your study area. Please, remake Figure 1. Make a bigger map and try to put the pictures a, b, c as reference maps. In picture d there is a division without name (west of Jintang). Please explain what is Didi Company. Is there any other. Why did you choose this one? P3 L92-93. “As shown in Table 1, the order data includes shown in” does not a sense. Table 1 is providing general information from the Didi Company. In which system are the coordinates that you providing. Are these meters? Give some more details about that or convert them to the WGS84 in order to be understood from the rest of the world. Obviously Figure 2 has a problem between the diagrams and the captions. The first diagram is the average pick-ups flow on workdays and the second is the average drop-offs flow on weekends. But still in both diagrams you have drawn workdays in blue line and weekends in red line. Please provide a correct figure. In Figure 2 both diagrams provide almost the same information. It appears to have the same pattern during the workdays and weekends. Why do you think this is happening? The same people (almost 5000) is using Floating cars both in workdays and weekends? Please check again the figures numbering (for instance Figure 4 twice). Preserve a homogeneity in terms of reference within the text e.g. “ in Figure 2….” Instead “ in figure 2….”. Table 4 is not actually a Table In Figures 5, 7, 8 please use a different color palette in order to ensure that the colors are sufficiently separated. Have the authors thought about calculating the Moran’s I index in order to find the spatial autocorrelation of the entities of the above mentioned figures? Please separate section “Discussion and Conclusion” into two different sections.

Thank you very much.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper proposes a new method to identify urban functional regions by combining floating car track data with POI data recorded on electronic map.

 

(1) Introduction. The introduction can be expanded. The authors need an explicit explanation of the exact contribution of the study to the literature. The introduction is also missing what the paper finds. In its current draft only a relatively very small portion explains what is been done in the paper.

 

(2) Materials and Methods.

The authors should briefly explain what is Didi Company.

POI data used in this paper are obtained by using the Gaode map (http://lbs.amap.com/) API. The website http://lbs.amap.com/ is only in Chinese. The authors should briefly explain what is Gaode map.

Who were the 10 professional practitioners referred to in 2.3.4. Delphi method? It needs to be explained.

 

(3) Results.

In line 109-110 authors write “office workers generally choose public transportation such as subway buses to prevent traffic jams” – but the main functional regions of the city are identified through clustering analysis according to the passenger's spatial-temporal travel characteristics drawn by the floating car data. Then, the fine-grained identification of the functional region attributes of the traffic community is achieved using the labels of POI data recorded on the electronic map.

The use of public transport by workers means that the floating car data survey gives incomplete data How the authors solved this problem?

Figure 5 – why cluster 5 is the only one marked with a crosshatch? In all  figures the other clusters have one color.

Figure 6 b - why the horizontal axis has a value up to 25? The day has 24 hours.

Figure 7 - no explanation of legend markings. Some of them are explained under figure 8, but not all. All descriptions should be found under Figure 7.

 

(4) Discussion and Conclusion

It is not clear what “is consistent with the slogan of a high quality living city proposed by Chengdu government”? Which means high quality of life (according Chengdu government)? It needs a better explanation.

Author Response

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I was rather critical with the previous version however authors did a good job to deal with my comments.

I have some soft comments: If possible 

Authors should improve (expand) the literature review section. The explicit description is required before section 3 and 4: I suggest making section 3 with a generalized heading for both the materials (3.1) and the methods  (3.2) (sub)sections. before sec. 3.1 authors can describe materials and methods explicitly.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer’s:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Identification of Urban Functional Regions Based on Floating Car Track Data and POI Data” (ID: 627040). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The revised part is marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:

1. Authors should improve (expand) the literature review section. The explicit description is required before section 3 and 4: I suggest making section 3 with a generalized heading for both the materials (3.1) and the methods (3.2) (sub)sections. before sec. 3.1 authors can describe materials and methods explicitly.

Response 1: Considering the reviewer’s suggestion, We have expanded the literature review section. We have merged Chapters 3 and 4, and described the materials and methods in front of Section 3.1.

Special thanks to you for your good comments, Thank you again for your advice. I hope to learn more from you.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

 

It was a pleasure to see that you have made all the proposed changes to your manuscript.

Nevertheless, please provide a better image (in terms of resolution) for Figure 4 and expand it to the limits of the page.

Please do some English language and style spell checking.(i.e. P4L138. "The one week data has been chosen" instead "The data one week has been chosen...").

Very good job!

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer’s:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Identification of Urban Functional Regions Based on Floating Car Track Data and POI Data” (ID: 627040). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The revised part is marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing:

1. Please provide a better image (in terms of resolution) for Figure 4 and expand it to the limits of the page.

Response 1: Considering the reviewer’s suggestion, We have reworked Figure 4 to improve the image resolution of Figure 4. We adjusted the size of Figure 4 in the article.

2. Please do some English language and style spell checking.(i.e. P4L138. "The one week data has been chosen" instead "The data one week has been chosen...").

Response 2: We're sorry for our wrong writing. We will carefully review the full text to avoid grammatical errors.

Special thanks to you for your good comments, Thank you again for your advice. I hope to learn more from you.