Route Selection for Minerals’ Transportation to Ensure Sustainability of the Arctic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

1.    Authors are asked to use the mathematical word processor in Word

2.    Table 1 is confusing, please write it in a more understandable style. Put the cost units used in that table.

3.    In table (3) what is the meaning of the costs expressed as a quotient?

4.    When you talk about dollars, do you mean US dollars?

5.    Authors are suggested to put order in the presentation of their work, especially when presenting the notation used

6.    In equation (2) specify the meaning of the variables that comprise it, for example, what does the variable E mean?

7.    Equation (3) is completely unreadable

8.    Almost all of the equations are illegible and the meaning of the variables used is unknown. The numbering of these is not aligned.

9.    Before presenting your conclusions, explain in detail the steps you followed to obtain the mentioned results. It is unclear how authors got to these.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

1. The formulas are typed in the MathType mathematical editor, which is integrated into Word and compatible with the Word processor. The typed formulas are revealed in the Word mathematical processor. Usually, publishers are asked to submit formulas in this editor.
2. We added USD in tab. 2. Now there is USD for 1 container and USD for the transportation of 1 ton of cargo per 100 km. We have this distance (km) for the cost of transporting 1 ton of ore, USD. This needs to be explained separately somewhere.
3. This is very important: now expert numbers l=1,2,...m are everywhere; variables in formulas (2 – 4) are disclosed.
4. The variable E is replaced by m – the number of experts (given in the explication to formula (2)). All equations are given separately, since the previously made combination of formulas turned out to be unreadable.
5. After the equations, the variables are deciphered; the numbering of the equations is aligned.
6. In the presentation of the calculations, we have made references to the steps of the proposed algorithm. In addition, the last table was divided into Tables 6 and Table 7 with links to calculation formulas. We are very grateful for the significant comments that made it possible to make the presentation of the article more logical.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

All remarks were taken into account, an insert is made in the Introduction, new references to the literature were added. We have not dwelt in more detail on the economic effect of transportation. The recommended links to sources are inserted into the text. We consider several criteria, including economic, environmental, and social. As the results of calculations have shown, the economic criteria can be not the main during routes selection process. The authors are grateful for the help and constructive, useful comments and recommendations on the revision of the article. We have asked Sustainability for English language editing.  

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

I would like to thank the authors for answering my previous comments and providing comprehensive replies. All the comments have been addressed satisfactorily and the paper has been enhanced greatly. I believe that the paper, now meets a good journal publication standard.

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.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The question as to how best to move ore from a central landlocked location to a processing area is a good one.  The authors do a good job discussing how the issue has both economic issues but also has concerns for indigenous people's land use and rights.

This paper focuses on the Tomtor deposit of rare earth minerals above the Arctic Circle in central Russia, about 400 km south of the Laptev Sea in the northwest portion of the Russian Republic of Sakha.  (One quick note:  The description at lines 177 to 180 and Figure 1 should be in the first paragraph of the entire paper, about at line 33.  Also Figure 1 should be much larger.)  The paper then asks about six different possible routes. These routes vary significantly

To evaluate the routes, the paper uses a method that involves getting experts to give opinions on a variety of factors (investments, land loss for indigeneous peoples, transportation costs, contamination risks, and social risks), which are then translated into numbers.  These scores are then put through a process where each of the five are equally-weighted.

It is here that the paper loses a lot of value.  While the expert opinion methodology makes some sense for hard-to-value areas such as contamination risks or land loss, it makes less sense for investments or transportation costs.  Investment costs are much higher in the Arctic, yet they can be directly estimated (as is done for any project).  Even more to the point, transportation costs are relatively easily estimated and vary both by distance and by type of transportation.  [These estimates can be found in the literature: see, for example, "Economic Viability and Emissions of Multimodal Transportation Infrastructure in a Changing Arctic" (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wcas/14/3/WCAS-D-21-0151.1.xml) in the most recent issue of Weather, Climate, and Society (July 2022; Vol 14, No. 3).]  It is clear that transportation costs (a) vary depending on the type of transportation (road, ship, rail), and (b) vary depending on distance.

Thus, while the expert methodology makes sense for three of the attributes, it does not make sense for items with direct economic costs that can be calculated.  The authors need to (a) get an estimate of the costs of any infrastructure needed to be created for each route, and (b) get an estimate of costs by rail or ship or road trains and then get an estimate for each route.

Estimating transportation costs are all the more important since the route the authors chose as the best is the longest.   Even so, it may be the cheapest as sea travel is cheaper than road or rail, especially in the Arctic.

In addition, the authors have functionally EQUALLY-WEIGHTED the five areas.  Yet it is likely that economics plays a large role here, as there is no real point to harvest the rare earth minerals at a loss. 

More attention needs to be paid to helping the reader understand the routes.  In the results section, another graph would help.  These routes are important, but they are very hard to read in Figure 1.  It is not clear why the numbers for the results are not in the text in section 3.  In addition, there is no discussion that the Northern Sea Route is sometimes shut due to sea ice (that section is not clear year-round).  Some quick discussion about the need for icebreakers to move the material might help.

Table 2 is probably the most important table in the paper for understanding the routes, but it is VERY hard to read.  Each route ("Route 1", "Route 2", etc.) should be in BOLD.  Also, the distances for Route 3 do not add up to 5500 km but to 5100 km

As a result, it is very unclear that the analyses in this paper tell us much of anything useful.  A better paper might examine the routes on investment costs and on transportation costs, and layer on top of that the expert analyses for the three other areas (land violation; contamination risks; social risks).  If, in the end, both the financial analyses and the expert analyses of the three non-financial calculations give the same result, then the answer is clear; if they do not, the answer is less clear.

Finally, the writing needs some copy-editing.  While I could understand all of the writing, there are some areas that need attention.  For example, even the first sentence (line 29) is oddly phrased and could be re-written.  Also, the authors need to put an "and" before the last part of a phrase "x, y, AND z" (see, for example, line 45, 122, or 204, among others).  Lines 46 to 67 are interesting but the writing is choppy -- the paragraphs need to be tied together.  From lines 81 to 86 the authors need to rewrite the sentences so it does not say "The paper [17] analyzes" but instead work the citations into the sentence as they do in the rest of the paper.  Line 114 starts with "The roots of the current situation are that" -- all of that could be deleted and the sentence would read better.  Line 126 needs an "or" between "purposes" and "social risks".

Also, lines 153-157 are the same as lines 158-161.  Lines 173 to 176 have an odd phrasing and should be re-written.  Lines 209 to 215 are important; these five points should have bullet-points.

While I am not certain, it appears that some Cyrillic is in Equations 2 to 7 when describing i=1,2,3 ...

As noted above, Table 2 is both hard to read and has an important typo for Route 3, which is 5100 km and not 5500 km.

As noted above, the paper could use some copy-editing.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is interesting since the authors stated in the abstract that the cost covered are transportation, distance, and damaged costs which can be seen that it might be an interesting issue to be discussed. However, in the writing, I don't think it is clearly written what are those costs.  

There are other points needed to be cleared by the authors:

1. How is $250/KM^2 is determined? Where is it used in the research?

2. Why does not the distance traveled be converted to transportation cost?

3. Why don't there be any constraints to the problem? If not, meaning the cheapest total cost route will be chosen. This, therefore, is the points why the authors really need to be very careful on how to address each of the cost. 

4. If the main contribution is to assess the expert evaluation to fuzzy quantitative, please state so as your contribution. 

I truly think this is an interesting issue to be tackled. I would like to see a major revision of this paper.