Multi-Level Participatory GIS Framework to Assess Mobility Needs and Transport Barriers in Rural Areas: A Case Study of Rural Mumias East, a Sub-County of Kakamega, Kenya

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

The abstract appears to provide a clear and concise overview of the study. It effectively communicates the purpose and methodology of the research and the main contributions of the study. However, there are a few areas where the language could be improved for clarity and coherence. Here are some suggestions:

 

In the first sentence, "has been in applying" could be changed to "has been on applying" for grammatical correctness.

In the second sentence, "implementation" could be changed to "implementing" for consistency with the previous sentence.

In the third sentence, "multi-level" could be hyphenated as "multi-level" for clarity.

In the fourth sentence, it would be helpful to provide some context about what mobility needs and barriers are being assessed. For example, are these related to transportation or something else?

In the fifth sentence, "Sub-Saharan Africa" could be capitalized for proper noun usage.

In the seventh sentence, "context" could be clarified to indicate that it refers to the context of the PGIS framework specifically.

In the eighth sentence, "content" could be clarified to indicate that it refers to the content of the data collected.

In the eleventh sentence, "together" could be replaced with "along with" for clarity.

In the final sentence, "a top-down, often irrelevant decision-making system" could be clarified to indicate what system is being referred to specifically.

Overall, these are minor suggestions and the abstract effectively communicates the purpose and methodology of the study.

To assess mobility needs and barriers in Mumias-East, participants from the community were recruited, taking into account their social, age categories, and gender. The participants' profiles included being an active member and deeply involved in activities of the local community, being able to speak in local languages and dialects, being knowledgeable about the local cultures and customs, being knowledgeable about the community's day-to-day movements and knowing road trends. The study also recruited Youth Mappers (enumerators) with GIS knowledge in digitizing information collected from participants and digitally recording the information about geographical objects they see around them as they walk around the community. The training of both enumerators and participants was conducted for five days, with the training focusing on the PGIS process, the research goals, and ethical considerations.

The use of participatory GIS (PGIS) in rural transport planning is described as revolutionary, as it empowers rural communities to be involved in decision-making processes. The study conducted in the Mumias-East region of Kenya used a multi-level PGIS model to highlight mobility needs and barriers in rural communities. The research intends to build an open-source PGIS toolkit that can evaluate the accessibility, utilization, and sustainability of mobility options in rural areas. This toolkit will be able to adapt existing mapping tools, assemble data from multiple sources, validate and enhance data through community participation, and integrate with a global platform for wide dissemination. The implementation of the PGIS toolkit will not only bring long-hidden mobility needs and barriers into the mainstream but also provide a tool for rural communities to assist with proximity and shortest route decisions based on their transport modes and existing barriers. The study also uses computerized spatial analysis to understand rural communities' mobility needs.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Congratulations to the authors. I think the work has improved a lot. It would incorporate a map with the location of Kenya within Africa. Later, in the conclusions, I would specify a little more about concrete actions within mobility in rural areas thanks to the development of this research

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

The research has merit and novelty but the spatial analysis and presentation of the output should be improved.

The three aspects: Context, Process and Content should finally relates to the success/failure of the PGIS.

The majority of the references are more than 5 years making the research look less significant to current development.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors,

The aim of the paper is interesting, but the whole structure of the paper is not clear. Generally there is a lot of information, which are not strictly connected withe the topic and the aim of research.

The main of the whole problem is luck of the idea how to present the results. In my opition this paper could not be publish in this form. It's need more reconstruction. It is scientific paper so it should be max. 16 pages. I know that it is possible to publish longer paper in this journal, so it is only my informal comment.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors,

The paper was modificated, but in my opinion is still too long. The aim of scientific paper is too preape idea of research and results on max. 16 - 18 pages.

Some figs. need improvment.

 

Fig. 6 - here is some schedule/notes draw by hand - it should be prepared in some drawings computer programme - now this form is not accpated

Fig 15-17 - white words are not visible

Author Response

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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

Figure 5. is not clear 

the conclusions are very succinct

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is interesting and the territory a lot. In many cases, I consider that it does not meet the minimum scientific requirements to be published in this journal. There are several reasons: cartography is of low quality, statistical data is treated superficially, own data is not generated, indicators with the combination of information, etc. In short, it is a very general and descriptive work. It does not contribute anything new or generate scientific value. Perhaps, with some improvements, it would fit in another type of magazine.

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The presentation is not well organized e.g. the maps of both case studies can be combined instead of taking two pages; mobility barriers are only described in general without detailed impact on transportation and are not spatially identified in the GIS.

2. The definition/ understanding/ applications of PGIS in transport shall be reviewed deeper since this is the main theme of this article. Currently, it is very vague and the literature review on the usage of PGIS in transportation is minimally described.

3. There are thousands of kilometers length of road as provided by the Ministry of Transport and Public Works. How much of these data were being visited to mark the mobility barriers? Much of the content of this article is on data preparation with minimal spatial analysis. Even the output of the spatial analysis is not shown.

4. The finding of the "Context-Process-Content" PGIS framework focused on the process of setting up PGIS and not on the transport needs and barriers.