Progress Assessment and Spatial Heterogeneity Analysis of Water Conservancy Modernization Construction in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for sending the manuscript which aims to assess the modernization level of water conservancy projects in China. The authors suggested an entropy method with indicators they selected. The paper provides an overall status of the water conservancy projects in China. However, it has several problems.

1.The paper would benefit from a complete revision of the language, grammar and structure. As it is written now, it is very difficult to follow, one gets lost in the wording and the length of the paper.

2. The methodology is not robust lacking of justifications in many places. In detail, the construction of indicators is problematic, the way the authors used to define indicators was just hand-picked based on authors' opinions/understanding. The authors argued that all indicators were selected based on scientific rationality (effectiveness, feasibility, comprehensiveness and objectivity). However, to me, this is not justifiable and is not a robust way to select indicators. At least, I don't see the 'scientific rationality' from what I have seen. The indicators used for the assessment are very biased, which obviously affects the final results.

Some specific comments:

1. The authors need clear definitions for terms used such as 'water modernization, spatial autocorrelation, and H-H agglomeration. In particular, they should not appear in the abstract unless they are common terminologies. I don't understand what they mean. 
2. Numerous inappropriate expressions are found throughout the paper. For example, by what criteria China is defined as the largest developing country? By GDP, yes. By saying severe drought and water shortages still exist in China, you definitely need data to support it. For example, what drought episodes hit China, frequency, duration, etc. As well, "shortcomings of WCM" sounds weird to me. By saying shortcomings, do you mean WCM could not be a good strategy?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

in my opinion your paper analyzes a very important topic but your approach is too local, for example about 90% of references are of Chinese authors. I think that your work must be located in the international scientific contest, in particular you must do this work for introduction and conclusion.

I underline these points:

1. Row 36-37: “China’s per capita water resources are 2051 m³, which is only 1/4 of the world average [3]”. Are you sure of this data? In reference [3] I don’t find this data.
2. Table 1 must be recalled and explained in the test.
3. Formula 13, 0.6 or 0.7 Mi, and why?
4. Rows 181-182: “For unavailable data in 2018, we used linear interpolation as a supplement”, it is very generic from statistical point of view! What data would be interpolated?
5. There is a mistake between figure 1 and figure 2 (row 214). Figure 1 would be useful also for the six dimensions to understand the relation with WCM.
6. Row 240: “the construction of AUWP”, AUWP is not defined before.
7. “3.2 Analysis on the imbalance of WCM level”, no comment about WCSR?
8. There is a mistake between figure 5 and figure 6 (row 214). Figure 6 is in accordance with the paper (rows 324-325), n° shortcomings?

Some other minor remarks:

• Row 22: you must better explain “H-H agglomeration …..”. In the abstract, this concept is not clear.
• Row 33: I think that is better to define GDP and RMB
• Row 381: review the English language and style.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for the response. Although the authors have made significant revisions to the manuscript. I am still doubting the rationale of the indicators chosen for the assessment. The indicators are too arbitrary and subjective. Different indicators will present different results. Some advanced methods such as AHP would be helpful for the paper to improve its robustness. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

I appreciated your work in the paper revision. Introduction and also method are better exposed.

Remain only some minor remarks.

Rows 84-85: this sentence is not clear. “In this study, it has been estimated based on six specific requirements, which is an addition to those in existing research”.

Rows 295-305: this analysis of the matter is not very convincing. Perhaps some references can help (you say "By discussing and referring to the relevant literatures")

Rows 477-478: this reference in not well formatted.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.