Sustainability Assessment of Modern High-Rise Timber Buildings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper has strong methodological approach for sustainability assessment of high-rise timber buildings. There are some issues to be resolved.

Line 31-33, “The aim is to use available resources to meet the needs of today's generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This claim is very abstract. What are the needs of today’s generation? Why future generation requires to compromising their ability? This needs to be elaborated or rephrase.

In line 36,37, a reference is required.

In line 89, “When a building is no longer suitable for current purpose, it can be transformed.” Could you give examples?

In line 99, a reference is required for “According to Wallenius,”

In introduction, please define high-rise timber buildings, for example, the height of a building. additionally, it is missing why high-rise buildings have to be timber structure.

In section 3.2, the authors diligently described the building cases. It can be replaced a table including the overview of building characteristics and information. Consider revising section 3.2 and elaborating the assessment section. That is a core of this paper and the main contribution.

There are many indicators, however, there are less explanation for each indicator. It will be also helpful highlighting or making the best-case numbers bold to understand better.

In discussion section, authors need to explain that why existing building assessment tools cannot be applied to the high-rise timber buildings. What do these new findings make difference from the current building assessment indicators?

It is suggested to structure discussion section according to environmental, economic and technological, and social indicators. Identifying multi-criterial assessment indicators and applying them to real cases are the main purpose of this paper. Therefore, it will be more coherent as authors follow the scheme in discussion section.

From line 558 to 569 are mentioned in section 1. Moreover, it will be clear to separate discussion and conclusion chapters.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a hierarchical system of sustainability assessment indicators, which assesses the sustainability of modern high-rise timber buildings using multi-criteria assessment methods. Nevertheless, there is a lot of space for improvement in the structure and content of this study.

1. There is a lack of conclusion part in this article, which is a basic and important part of academic papers.
2. There is no doubt that this paper has certain innovation and value. However, in the abstract, the author should also point out the theoretical and practical significance of this paper.
3. Line 118 points out that " many of the aforementioned sustainable building rating systems 118 have been criticized for overemphasizing environmental aspects". So, how can we ensure that the evaluation criteria established in this study would not over consider environmental factors?
4. Line 157 states that “the most important indicators 157 describing the three dimensions of sustainability were selected”. Can you explain the reference basis for judging whether it is important or not? Does subjectivity affect the outcome of choice?
5. Lines 162-163 mentioned that this paper has invited a total of six experts. Is the number of experts too small? When experts disagree, how to determine their opinions?
6. In part 3.2 of this paper, the author carries out multi criteria evaluation on buildings in six different regions. How to ensure the applicability and universality of the evaluation system in different areas?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is very nicely written and well referenced.

my only comments are:

• only 6 experts have weighted the parameters that have been selected. It will be interesting to see more experts involved or, at least to have a clear description of the results obtained for the weighting: average values, standard deviation etc, to see if the 6 experts gave a pretty solid weighting or if the results were fuzzy and a mean value has been used.
• some results are very stable throughout the life of the building ie: thermal trasmittente, height, etc. others can change quite significantly, for instance if a new supermarket or a new kindergarten is open next door. What is the impact of this on sustainability?
• height is not a merit “per se” while here it is presented as a value that deserves points. It would be interesting to see this decision justified in the paper

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper proposed a hierarchical system of sustainability assessment indicators for modern high-rise timber buildings, which considers three aspects of sustainability (environmental, economic / technological, and social). Based on it, this paper compared the tallest timber buildings in different countries. This work is meaningful since many sustainable building rating systems only consider one or two aspects or they only provide more consideration in one aspect. However, this paper still needs to be improved. My comments are listed as following:

• Abstract introduced too many backgrounds and needs for this research, but did not provide sufficient details about this paper’s work. For example, the abstract mentioned that the proposed system of indicators considers three dimensions of sustainability; however, it did not point out which dimensions they are. In addition, it is better to display the findings of this paper in the abstract.
• In the introduction, it is better to show the paper structure.
• I suggest updating the paper structure. Based on the abstract and introduction, it seems that the hierarchical system of sustainability assessment indicators should be a general framework, which can be used to evaluate any modern high-rise timber buildings. The performance comparison for some tallest timber buildings should be a case study using this framework. Thus, it is not suitable to combine them together and become this paper’s research methodology (Figure 1). My suggestion is that Sections 2 and 3 should be reorganized into three sections: (1) literature review about main categories for sustainability assessment; (2) methodology of developing the general framework; and (3) case study for the tallest timber buildings in different countries.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The quality of the manuscript has been improved after the revision. There is still a minor issue.

Please check line 535 paragraph in section 5. The paragraph is bold typo, choose correct style.

Give a space before Section 6 conclusion. Now, it is part of the previous paragraph.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you once again for review of the manuscript and valuable comments.

Minor revision has been done – the style of the paragraph was corrected, a space before Section 6 given.

Reviewer 2 Report

My comments have been well addressed.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you once again for review of the manuscript and valuable comments.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors addressed all my comments. I do not have any other comment. This topic is interesting and meaningful. It is the time to publish this paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you once again for review of the manuscript, valuable comments and great support.