Open and Consistent Geospatial Data on Population Density, Built-Up and Settlements to Analyse Human Presence, Societal Impact and Sustainability: A Review of GHSL Applications
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Consistent geospatial data on population density, built-up and settlements to quantify human presence, societal impact and sustainability: A review of GHSL applications.
Let's breakdown the title at its molecular level
Geospatial, population density, built-up, settlements, QUANTIFY:
Human presence, societal impact, and Sustainability
The overall presentation of the theme is clear and very generalized the materials extracted or mined from a different published research paper. However, the QUANTIFICATION of the whole research body is lacking in the present research. So, let us understand this step-by-step.
First, the GEOSPATIAL DATA is a key term, and much of the focus of this review should be reflecting GEOSPATIAL data sources used, their availability at the global scale. This is important to quantify because providing this information serves two objectives: First, policymakers experienced with GEOSPATIAL data can directly infer the quality and accuracy of the data e.g., you can create a bar graph or table documenting which satellites were frequently used so that the reader can therefore ascertain the data product reliability for different policies.
Second, documenting the access to processed data. This includes web links or a particular organization that can be consulted.
Therefore, Table 1 should be changed by including another column addressing either data is freely accessible or not.
anther column indicating satellites being used, This column can replace the "Short title" column, which can be merged with "Use of GHS spatial grids”.
To make it more precise, another table can be created documenting the use of these datasets in recent developments and scientific communications.
The same is true about Table 2 and Table 3, to quantify the geospatial data consumption.
Now, let's move to Figure 1 which is a revised version of a previously published paper by the same authors.
I would recommend making a Sankey diagram that can quantify the whole Earth System diagram. The present diagram is a very generalized version and it does not quantify the Earth system diagram. One might be interested to know what is the proportion of different biospheres being exploited by humans, the published work I believe can be quantified to include this information in the diagram and Sankey diagram would be a great contribution. Please check this article for reference.
Hybrid Sankey diagrams: Visual analysis of multidimensional data for understanding resource use - ScienceDirect
Table 4. should be better represented with the Sankey diagram.
The discussion, therefore, should be discussed using the Sankey diagram and Tables. I believe if authors could adopt this layout, the manuscript would be many interesting contributions for the general public, geospatial data experts, and policymakers respectively.
A further recommendation, AUTHORS are advised not to state what they are not intended to do. I am referring to line 85 to line 90.
I recommend presenting the research objective clearly what you are intended to present.
I, therefore, recommend major revisions.
Best of luck
Thank you
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We provide reply to your comments.
Please see the attachment.
Kind regards,
Daniele Ehrlich on behalf of all the authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is interesting. It is done according to the instructions given in the journal guidelines. Organization of paper with sections (Introduction, Background, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions) should be changed a little - there should be pointed as a section "Materials and methods". The authors cited sources adequately and appropriately, and all the citations in the text are listed in the References section.
Author Response
Dear Reveiwer,
Thank you for your positive comments and positive response to our paper.
Kind regards,
Daniele Ehrlich on behalf of all authors
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors incorporated the changes. Now at this stage article make more sense for readers.
