A Robust Stochastic Programming Model for the Well Location Problem: The Case of The Brazilian Northeast Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article presents a robust stochastic programming approach to the problem of locating artesian wells for the relief of drought-affected populations under uncertainty. However, there is a need for clarification in this paper, which can be addressed as follows.

The literature review should be more comprehensive. Are you sure? None of the studies considered the proposed aspect you mentioned.

What is the meaning of "e" in line 258?

What is the rationale for using equation 1, as referenced in [27], in this paper? Should other parameters be taken into consideration as well?

Please verify the definitions of parameters and variables. They should be the same in the mathematical model.

How was the average cost of transportation and setup cost calculated?

Should it be Sj or Si?

Could you provide further clarification on the objective function? More details would be appreciated.

Should it be pi or pj?

What is the difference between s and s' in Equation 14?

Could you please provide further details and context for Equation 14?

Can the proposed robust stochastic programming find infeasible solutions?

How was Table 2 generated?

When you solved the problem in AIMMS, how long did it take? Could you please provide an explanation?

Why was the lambda parameter varied from 0 to 2?

Why is prioritization important? What happens when the mathematical model does not consider prioritization?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please find the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

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Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

After this paper has improved, all of content are excepted and I think it can be published in this journal.

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors

Thank you for addressing my comments. In related to following comment:

Point 8: A section titled solution approach is necessary.

I mean you must consider a new section titled " Solution approach" after section 3 and before case study and raise what solution methods and software has been used for solving the problem such as GAMS, LINGo , etc,(What approach exact or meta, running system attributes...)

not change the the title of section 3.

It is so important to do this comment before publication.

BR

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s concern. Previously, we had changed the title of section 3, but now we have created subsection 3.4, as below:

3.4. Solution Approach

To solve the mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem, we adopted an exact approach using AIMMS as the optimization software and CPLEX 22.1 as the solver on a Core i7 with 8GB of RAM under the Windows 64-bit environment.

 

This comment was also available in subsection 4.2. Results.