Cruise Port Performance Evaluation in the Context of Port Authority: An MCDA Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is to offer a multi-criteria performance assessment model as a tool for decision-making on the port's strategic direction, action planning of port, and port infrastructure. To assist port operators in evaluating cruise port performance from a multidisciplinary perspective, this model extracts a port's advantages and disadvantages through indicators of port performance. The results of the multi-criteria model also indicate the actions that must be taken to optimize port development and performance.

 

1. Too much repetition can be observed in abstract, introduction and other part of this paper. please reduce unnecessary repetition.
2. The analysis of current cruise port performance evaluation approaches is not sufficient.
3. “In touristic and socio-economical aspects, it 569 should be noted that Barcelona has the highest value with the greatest distance from the 570 lowest value, giving it a score of 1” what does this mean?
4. Some important references, such as Smart Collaborative Balancing for Dependable Network Components in Cyber-Physical Systems, Strategic Conservation of Gulf Coast Landscapes Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis and Open Source Remote Sensing and GIS Data, should be added and discussed.
5. The proofreading is highly needed.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

• The introduction section should also briefly mention how to select methods with the case study.
• The literature review should more highlight on single MCDM method and integrated MCDM methods. Then, the authors should emphasize the significance of integrating AHP and TOPSIS, and also past related works.
• There are some past studies related to MCDM in the logistics as well as sustainability field, and the integration of MCDM methods that are still neglected from the review such as
  • The Cruise Port Place Selection Problem with Extended VIKOR and ANP Methodologies under Fuzzy Environment, Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2011 Vol II, WCE 2011, July 6 - 8, 2011, London, U.K.
  • Improving the Strategic Benchmarking of Intellectual Capital Management in Logistics Service Providers, Sustainability 12, no. 23: 10174.
  • Framework for benchmarking logistics performance using fuzzy AHP.International Journal of Business Performance Supply Chain Model. 2009, 1, 82–98.
  • Improving the intellectual capital management approach using the hybrid decision method, Journal of Intellectual Capital, Volume 19, Issue 4, pp. 670 – 691.
• Each criterion must be cited to the revewed studies
• To present the reliability of assessment results, experts and their qualifications or specification must be provided. 
• What are the real contributions of this work? There are other works applying MCDM in the port selection problem already. Authors should highlight the novelty of work in both introduction and literature review section.
• The discussion section should be added to analyze the similarities and differences to other past related works. Trying to highligh the advantages of proposed method over past approaches. The limitations of method must be included in this section too (or conclusion). This to compare strengths and weaknesses of proposed methods with other works. The readers read this part, and they can decide to use your proposed method or not.
• Practical implication must be added.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper, the authors have discussed the multicriteria performance assessment model as a tool for decision making on the port's strategic direction, action planning of port, and port infrastructure. The paper can be a good contribution to the existing literature, however, authors should address the following issues:

1. The authors need to mention how does ports’ attributes influence cruise shipping network connectivity.
2. Discuss hub-ports and what is its significance in improving the performance.
3.  Discuss some real-world applications in this regard to support your claim regarding the performance.
4. Most of the references are old, consider recent works and analyze them with their merits and issues.
5. Authors should discuss the social-economical aspects related to [prts performance
6. Mention "Cruise Line International Association (CLIA)" and what was the impact on Job creation/global economy by cruise shipping.
7. Discuss how to improve the higher connectivity of ports.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper proposes an improved self-attention-based GCN module, which is easily to plug in other networks. Specifically, the proposed module is able to recognize the relationships between two connected nodes and extract more powerful feature representations than GAT. 

1. Section 1 and Section 2 can be merged.

 

2. In section 3, I personally think it’s better to add an illustration of the whole workflow that you used for cruise port performance evaluation, including weight production and the associated implementation.

 

3. In section 4, a comparison between the proposed cruise port performance evaluation method and one state-of-art method is needed.

 

4. Section 5 should focus more on the conclusion you’ve got from your results and there is no need to repeat the motivation of this research.

5. Some related works are missed, [1] Deep-IRTarget: An Automatic Target Detector in Infrared Imagery using Dual-domain Feature Extraction and Allocation, [2] Deep-learning-based burned area mapping using the synergy of Sentinel-1&2 data. [3]Graph-based few-shot learning with transformed feature propagation and optimal class allocation

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors didn't check my previous comments carefully.

Reviewer 2 Report

All of my suggestions have been responded properly. The quality of paper has now reached the level of Sustainability journal. Please check formats and typos carefully before submitting the final version.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have done good work to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors addressed most of my concerned. But there is two issues left.

1. Please clarify the contributions of MCDA in Introduction.

2. Some related works are missed, [1]Deep-IRTarget: An Automatic Target Detector in Infrared Imagery using Dual-domain Feature Extraction and Allocation.