An Easy Snowpack Depth Evaluation Using Smartphone, Bluetooth Device, and Augmented Reality Marker of Open Computer Vision Package

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have proposed an AR based snowpack depth estimation using markers, based on the images captured. A pre-calibrated devise with markers were used for this purpose. This framework will be helpful to monitor or identify from a longer distance based on the camera resolution. Though the work is interesting some of the below points to be addressed for further quality improvement.

In the introduction part, It is stated “…were proposed for observing snowfall, floods, avalanches, animal 37 damage, etc. [4, 6-19].” Numerous literature (6-19) were cited without detailed discussions.

Cited literature content should be appropriately discussed with reference to the theme of current proposed framework. There exist some recent literature on challenges and advancements in implementation of AR suggested for further consideration.

Wu, Hsin-Kai, et al. "Current status, opportunities and challenges of augmented reality in education." Computers & education 62 (2013): 41-49.

Eswaran, M., and MVA Raju Bahubalendruni. "Challenges and opportunities on AR/VR technologies in the context of industry 4.0: A state of the art review." Journal of Manufacturing Systems 65 (2022): 260-278.

Mekni, Mehdi, and Andre Lemieux. "Augmented reality: Applications, challenges and future trends." Applied computational science 20 (2014): 205-214.

There are too many long statements, for example “Some, … of small ships, etc”

Please correct the statement “proposed system has cm order snowpack depth survey accuracy”

Please correct the statement “The laboratory PC with AirDroid software…”
Please use better illustration for figure 1.

It is necessary to elaborate the working method/AR-marker calibration.

 

Please list the assumptions about the image capturing. Such as camera pose, light, etc.,

Author Response

Thank you for your review, comments, and suggestions for my article to improve its quality. I would like to respond following. "Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewer would like to thank the authors for this thoughtful manuscript. This work has good potential. The authors are requested to put in some additional efforts to improve the quality of this manuscript. 

 

Introduction 

The authors are requested to elaborate on how the proposed technique can help in early response of natural disaster related events. Please cite the following article that reports a major disaster and discuss how post-disaster analysis of such an event can benefit from the data in terms of loss of inhabited area assessment through post & pre-disaster change comparison. The event largely impacted the local human livelihoods as well as manmade infrastructure. 

-Shugar et al, A massive rock and ice avalanche caused the 2021 disaster at Chamoli, Indian Himalaya, Science, 2021.

 

Furthermore, the authors are requested to highlight the usefulness of the proposed method for interdisciplinary applications with snow cover and cryosphere like in the field of satellite remote sensing. Please cite the following articles and discuss the additional benefits that the proposed method can contribute to the observations of such investigations.

-Muhuri et al., Snow cover mapping using polarization fraction variation with temporal RADARSAT-2 C-band full-polarimetric SAR data over the Indian Himalayas, IEEE JSTARS, 2018. 

-Kostadinov et al., “Watershed-scale mapping of fractional snow cover under conifer forest canopy using lidar”, RSE, 2019.

-Gascoin et al., “Estimating Fractional Snow Cover in Open Terrain from Sentinel-2 Using the Normalized Difference Snow Index”, Remote Sensing, 2020.

 

Sunlight  Intensity vs. Snow Detection Performance

The authors are requested to present a graph indicating this relationship.  

 

Figures 

The figures are poorly presented. The relevant information that the authors are trying to present is not clearly visible. The authors are requested to provide high resolution figures. The quality of the figures provided at the moment does not justify the efforts of the investigation.

 

Processing

The authors have not discussed any point regarding the processing of the data. Please discuss how the data moves from the cellphone to the cloud and what kind of resources are required to process the data. These days cell phones also have a lot of processing power so is it at all necessary to move the data to the cloud? 

 

6. RPA

The authors are requested to remove this subsection since the contribution is minimal. 

 

Conclusion 

The authors are requested to list the key contributions in this section. At the moment the section is not detailed enough.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your review, comments, and suggestions for my article to improve its quality. I would like to respond following. "Please see the attachment."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf