A Meta-Synthesis Review of Occupant Comfort Assessment in Buildings (2002–2022)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

As stated in the paper title, the authors used a meta-synthesis approach for analyzing findings from relevant scientific research studies in the indoor comfort domain during the last 20 years to identify the influential factors and formulate conclusions and recommendations for future research. The topic is of great interest in the current context of providing an optimum indoor comfort level, the climate change challenge and energy-saving constraints in the building sector. The paper is generally well-organized and written, but some improvements and clarifications are needed, as follows:

1. Please check the sentence formulation and correct the English writing. Examples of writing errors: 

-          Sentence fragmentation (rows 26-27, 227-228, 370-371, Table 6 – “The STI is the most commonly used objective index in usual spaces and”);

-          Use of capital letters (rows 51, 313, 440, column names in Table 8 and Table 9);

-          “SiteSpace” or “Citespace” instead of “CiteSpace” (rows 176, 192 and 207);

-          Supplementary word “In” (row 294);

-          “Due” instead of “Du” (row 303);

-          “Mostly” instead of “Most” (rows 442 and 445).

2. You should rephrase the sentence in rows 19-22; I suggest using “productivity” instead of “comfort” in row 21.

3. You should use a more recent citation instead of [2]; for example, Santamouris & Vasilakopoulou “Present and future energy consumption of buildings: Challenges and opportunities towards decarbonization” (2021).

4. Figure 2 must be improved: it is not easy to follow, there are two horizontal lines between RT and AQI instead of one, a horizontal arrow occurs, and air velocity is also an aspect of thermal comfort, not only of IAQ.

5. All figures and tables should be first referred to in the text (see Fig. 3, Fig. 4 - which is mentioned after Fig. 5, Table 1, Fig. 8, Fig. 9, Fig. 19).

6. The presentation of the relevant studies' selection process should be improved (Section 2). Which were the inclusion and exclusion criteria for retaining 391 publications from the total of 8163 results? The sentence in rows 212-213 is correct? Which are clusters #4 and #9? Please specify in the text which papers Figure 5 includes.

7. Figure 8 is difficult to read.

8. Local climate and geography are not human factors (row 291).

9. In Figure 10, please use the small letters corresponding to the Köppen system’s symbols.

10. The indicators mentioned in Table 8 should have been previously introduced. For example, for thermal comfort, TPMVD, PPDwC, PPDMax and TDP are not presented in Table 5.

11.   Figure 18 is not very relevant in the context of this paper.

Author Response

 Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments to the Authors:

• In general, the manuscript is very good review; need some minor correction to qualify text only.
• In general the manuscript needs check for format, and added abbreviation in text.
• In line 68: what is meant by “HVAC system”?
• In line 90: what is meant by “ASHARE Standard”?
• In lines 122-124: authors wrote “Indoor air quality (IAQ) is directly related to indoor environment quality (IEQ) and depends on three basic factors. These factors include the number of pollutants, the rate of ventilation in buildings, and the duration of confinement of pollutants in built environments”. Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) are often considered to be the same thing and are frequently mixed up. Although IAQ and IEQ are two different things they do have over lapping concepts. Authors should be mention to this difference.
• In lines 327-333: authors should be adding abbreviations in figure 10 as key for figure.
• In line 356: authors should be changing colors in figure 11, using different colors not blue color degrees.
• In line 470: what is meant by “PMV/PPD model”?
• In lines 483-484 (Table 7): what is meant by “ASHRAE, EPA, OSHA, and WHO”? Authors should be adding abbreviations under table.
• In line 514: what is meant by “PCS chair and CFD”?
• In lines 519-520: what is difference between “IoT” and “IOT”?
• In line 559: authors should be changing colors in figure 15, using different colors not blue color degrees.
• In lines 651: authors should be adding abbreviations in figure 19 as key for figure.
• In line 680: Conclusions and recommendations not clear. In addition, conclusion should not contain figures number and what is limitation of your study?
• In line 235: Are these references present in references list? If yes, what is useful of "Appendix"? And why appendix contains 154 references only.
• In general references numbers in text need check and corrections.
• In lines 260-265: References [53] and [64] not present in text.
• In lines 260-265: References [54] and [65] not present in correct arrangement.
• In lines 301-302 (Table 3): References [157] and [158] - [175] not present in correct arrangement.
• In line 310: Reference [155] not present in correct arrangement.
• In line 329: Reference [55] not present in correct arrangement.
• In line 342: Reference [113] not present in correct arrangement.
• In lines 342-352: References [114] not present in text.
• In line 352: Reference [115] not present in correct arrangement.
• In lines 360-678: all references were not present in correct arrangement.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,
Thank you for your response; all comments have been adequately addressed. In Figure 2 “air temperature” should be coloured in green and “air velocity” in half green and half yellow.

Author Response

Author response: thank you for pointing this out, the mentioned figure has been modified.