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Study on the Distribution of Fresh Food Support System—An Example of Shanghai during the Epidemic Closure of 2022

Sustainability 2023, 15(9), 7107; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097107

by Jun Wang^*

and Man-Jun Fu

Reviewer 1:

Lili Cui

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Reviewer 4: Anonymous

Reviewer 5: Anonymous

Sustainability 2023, 15(9), 7107; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097107

Submission received: 14 February 2023 / Revised: 17 April 2023 / Accepted: 23 April 2023 / Published: 24 April 2023

(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Urban and Rural Development)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

The points that impress me most are:

1. The source of the data is true and reliable, which adds strong evidence to the analysis results. Unlike the data obtained from some questionnaires, there are many errors.

2. In the evaluation, the service population and service space are cross-considered, and the demand and cost are taken into account.

There're some revision advices for author.

1. The description of "flexibility" in the second paragraph of the Introduction is too much, just to explain the demand for e-commerce under the epidemic situation. This article mainly focuses on the layout of the supply system. The relationship between the two can not be deleted, just a brief sentence.

2. The description of supporting facilities in the literature review is a little too many and the correlation is not high. It may be clearer to write directly about the impact of population density on supporting facilities, so as to explain the reason why this paper selects population density for research.

3. The first two paragraphs of the conclusion mainly describe the necessity of comprehensively analyzing the size of the service population and the size of the service space when evaluating the facilities. I think it should be placed at the beginning of the article rather than at the end.

And, other questions that are still not clearly discussed are listed as following, hope the authors could make advance in the future.

1. In the literature review, the meaning of service space divided by scale is not clearly explained: "primary living circle, basic living circle, basic living circle and daily living circle" these words seem to have similar meanings.

The suggestion section should include several parts to describe how to establish a scientific security system. The original text is somewhat confusing, such as the combination of 6.1.2 (emphasizing the characteristics of different regions) and 6.2.1 (ensuring that supply is closely combined with population distribution and characteristics). Population characteristics can also be considered as a characteristic of a region; Or it can be divided into two parts by focusing on the details and the general direction, such as paying attention to the regional characteristics and the role of agriculture as one part, and establishing two sets of supply systems and other large-scale adjustments as the other part.

And, the question maybe draw more attention in the future is that Take a certain platform as an example, use the order data obtained by the merchants to predict the population distribution density of each region, and then conduct a fresh warehouse supply capacity study similar to this article. Because the background of this article is the situation that everyone is at home under the epidemic situation. If it is not the epidemic situation, the distribution density of different regions in different periods of time will be different, the demand will be different, the conclusion of the distribution of the supply system will also be different, and the availability will be stronger, after all, the epidemic situation is only a special period.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions, which are very helpful for our research.

The description of "flexibility" in the second paragraph of the Introduction is too much, just to explain the demand for e-commerce under the epidemic situation. This article mainly focuses on the layout of the supply system. The relationship between the two can not be deleted, just a brief sentence.

Revision: Add a discussion on supply system layout research in the second paragraph. This description of resilience is mainly aimed at combining the object of this article with the sustainability of cities, in line with the theme of this journal. Therefore, there will be a description of urban resilience and sustainability in this section.

At the beginning of March 2022, COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Shanghai, the entire Pudong area began to be sealed and controlled by March 27.The whole city entered the closed control from April 1st to June 1st. At the beginning of this period, Shanghai Department of Commerce issued” the Notice on Releasing the Supply Guarantee Ability of E-commerce Platform”, which proposed that the provision of residents’ basic living materials through fresh e-commerce platforms should be included as a vital part of the government guarantee system. Shanghai Xinmin Evening News reported(March 22, 2022) that there are three ways for Shanghai residents to obtain basic necessities during the lockdown period: e-commerce platforms, Supermarket's own platforms and direct supply from the place of origin that offers group-buying(Table 1)[4]. Among them, the group purchase mode of direct supply from the place of origin can only develop under extreme circumstances and is not competitive in daily life because of the problems such as group threshold, lack of personalization and difficulty in guaranteeing service level; Relying on the developed distribution system, the pre-warehouse of the large-scale e-commerce platform and Supermarket's online platform have unique advantages in meeting the diversified needs of urban residents for food and daily consumer goods (Figure 1). The pre-warehouse in this research refers to the model of establishing a warehouse near the community, which is different from traditional warehouses and is far away from the final consumer population. Fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse is an innovative model of fresh e-commerce industry under this situation, which is a commodity pre-warehouse based on O2Oservice demand and use the mode of “Urban Distribution Center + Pre-warehouse” with the characteristics such as small scale of 80-100square meters and 3-5 kilometers Radius of radiation[5].Therefore, this paper refers to the pre-warehouse of e-commerce platform and Supermarket's online platform as the pre-warehouse of fresh e-commerce, studies the adaptability of the pre-warehouse of fresh e-commerce in the central city of Shanghai, analyzes and discusses the use of such facilities as the basic material supply node of urban residents, and constructs the material support system of the resilient city that meets the principle of sustainability.

The description of supporting facilities in the literature review is a little too many and the correlation is not high. It may be clearer to write directly about the impact of population density on supporting facilities, so as to explain the reason why this paper selects population density for research.

Revision: Add research literature on the relationship between urban resilience, population distribution, and facility supply to the literature review. Reduce some literature on the development of fresh e-commerce.

2.1 The fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse and urban sustainability

The sustainability of urban infrastructure refers to the fact that the facilities sustain function and maintain long-term use value with the progress of society on the basis of safety, effectiveness and durability[6].Domestic and foreign scholars generally divide urban infrastructure into productive service facilities and social service facilities[7].The object of this paper is the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse which belongs to the commercial facilities. The coverage of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in the city has gradually reached a certain level to ensure its service ability.

The research on the location of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse has been widely concerned by scholar, most of which focus on the goal of minimizing costs, suh as the rotten cost of food[9,10], carbon emission cost[11] and customer satisfaction[12].However, with the advent of the post-epidemic era leading to home consumption, the status significance of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in urban infrastructure has changed significantly, which has begun to assume the responsibility as the node of the urban material support system in emergency situations. In 2020, during the epidemic in Wuhan, all kinds of commercial supermarkets and fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse have demonstrated their ability to guarantee people’s livelihood and their potential as the node of the emergency supply system in megacities[13]. In 2021, after a new round of COVID-19 broke out, Heihe City of Heilongjiang Province, Shijiazhuang City of Hebei Province, Lanzhou City of Gansu Province, Hefei City of Anhui Province and many other places provided daily necessities for residents through fresh e-commerce platforms[14]. What’s more, During the outbreak of the COVID-19 in Shanghai in 2022, the role of fresh food e-commerce platform in ensuring residents' daily necessities was once again reflected, and the government also issued relevant announcements to release the supply guarantee capacity of e-commerce platform.

These researches all show the feasibility of fresh e-commerce as a part of the urban basic material support system. In addition, its guarantee role should be taken into key consideration when conducting research on the location of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in the post epidemic era.

2.2 Research on facility configuration

There have been plentiful researches on the standards and principles of urban public service facilities allocation in the field of urban planning. Relevant studies such as three levels of residential facilities allocation based on population size: "group - community - residential area"[15], life cycle system theory of service facility configuration which based on the scale of service space includes “fundamental circle（refers to meeting the needs of urban residents in terms of residence, education, and medicine, the range of behaviors required for the most basic needs of life, such as therapy and shopping, can be achieved by walking or bicycle）, basic life circle(refers to the range of behaviors that meet the needs of urban residents for employment, recreation, external transportation, etc. It is usually a distance range that requires taking buses, subways, etc.) and opportunity life circle(A range of behaviors formed mainly to meet the infrequent needs of urban residents. The mode of transportation mainly consists of public transportation and private cars.) planning mode from the perspective of residents’ personal life[16][17] have been proposed. The public service facility configuration in residential areas divided by these studies change with different research perspectives and objects, which leads to the inconsistency of divided units.

The preparation of community public service facility allocation standards should shift from a simple blueprint planning standard to an action planning standard oriented towards residents' needs, giving play to the two-way regulatory role of the market and planning standards, and seeking a dynamic balance between supply and demand[18]. Some studies have conducted a coupling analysis between urban infrastructure spatial allocation efficiency and urban spatial base to reflect the degree of infrastructure allocation efficiency[19].

At the urban planning discussion meeting on responding to public health emergencies such as COVID-19 with the theme of “improving urban immunity”, Scholars have proposed that a strong infrastructure is the prerequisite to deal with urban public health emergencies ,and improving the constructure of public service facilities is a significant measure to improve the sustainability and resilience of modern cities, meanwhile, the effective allocation of urban public service facilities is the focus[20] .

The first two paragraphs of the conclusion mainly describe the necessity of comprehensively analyzing the size of the service population and the size of the service space when evaluating the facilities. I think it should be placed at the beginning of the article rather than at the end.

Revision: Change to the second paragraph at the beginning of the article.

And, other questions that are still not clearly discussed are listed as following, hope the authors could make advance in the future.

In the literature review, the meaning of service space divided by scale is not clearly explained: "primary living circle, basic living circle, basic living circle and daily living circle" these words seem to have similar meanings.

Modification: explained in the text.

Modification: The suggested content has been adjusted as a whole.

Suggestions

6.1 Establishing a flexible fresh food supply guarantee system

This study found that during the lockdown period, most community supermarkets and vegetable markets that provide fresh food to citizens were unable to continue their business, while temporary material supply points set up by the government and pre-warehouse of e-commerce platforms became the main fresh food supply platforms. At the same time, these material supply points and pre-warehouses themselves are part of the city's daily supply system. Therefore, while designing the daily supply system, the city should also consider responding to different risks and form a flexible fresh food supply guarantee system. It should be pointed out that "daily" is the basis for "emergency". The city government should conduct risk assessments, simulate the process of material guarantee during normal operation of the city, and try to establish an effective, flexible, and sustainable two-level material supply system for "daily emergencies."

6.2Guaranteeing supply should be closely integrated with population distribution and characteristics

When studying different areas of Shanghai, this article found that the closer to the central urban area, the denser the distribution of supply points and the smaller the service area, while the farther away from the central area, the larger the service area. However, even in the central urban area, there are insufficient, appropriate, and excessive supply capabilities. This shows that the supply system based solely on administrative regions is not adaptable and cannot reflect the characteristics of different areas. In order to establish a sustainable urban supply security system, it is necessary to strengthen the research on the characteristics of different urban areas in order to better adapt to their needs. Through this study, we can find that due to the different density and distribution of the urban population, the method of ensuring the distribution of supply points based on administrative divisions has its limitations. The city should set up corresponding supply points according to the actual distribution of the population and evaluate the capacity and sustainability of each supply point. In areas with high population density, supply points should be increased or supply capacity should be improved, and vice versa.

6.3Increasing coordination while ensuring the independence of pre-warehouses

Each front warehouse should have "independence", not only can operate independently to provide fresh food for the surrounding areas, but also maintain basic functions in emergency situations. At the same time, it is also required to coordinate and manage the material guarantee at a higher level in the city, be able to timely obtain the inventory status of each front warehouse for mutual replenishment, and maintain orderly collaboration within certain rules and scope. This is also an embodiment of the sustainable aspect of the urban material supply system.

6.4 Construct a comprehensive mechanism for risk assessment and research

To enhance the sustainability and resilience of cities and to cope with risks, it is necessary to establish mechanisms for risk warning and assessment. For example, the lockdown of cities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was a sudden risk challenge. From the initial panic to the later calm response, Shanghai's "self-adaptive" process reflected the city's ability to adapt, while also highlighting the deficiencies in the city's risk warning and assessment. If the city's closure could be predicted in advance, and the duration of the closure accurately assessed, the government and residents would have the opportunity to make certain material reserves to cope with the risk. At the same time, this warning and assessment mechanism will also play a role in the face of the next risk, and is a truly effective means of enhancing the sustainability of cities.

Build a way to learn from and accumulate experience in risk response, and form a virtuous cycle mechanism of reflection, summary, and continuous optimization. During the Shanghai lockdown period of the current pandemic, the city government adopted different response measures at different stages. Some achieved good results (such as effectively blocking the path of the spread of the epidemic through the isolation of different areas), but some were not effective (such as designating government supply points for material supply, which could not meet the demand for fresh food of residents in the early stages of the epidemic). For these experiences and lessons, they should be organized through learning and reflection mechanisms to form more effective means to deal with the next crisis.

Explanation: This article takes Shanghai as an example to understand how the distribution of facilities can effectively ensure the lives of residents through spatial fitting of the two elements of population and facilities in large cities. The facilities here take the fresh front warehouse as the research object, and through this fitting, express the elements that should be paid attention to in terms of zoning, classification, and classification of facilities in large cities. However, in daily times, this study will face two uncertain factors. One is the large flow of urban population, especially the changes in residential and living locations, which makes the service objects of the fresh food front warehouse unable to accurately correspond to the residential population of the region; The second is that raw and fresh front-end warehouses can easily obtain material distribution and replenishment through urban logistics, and their supply capacity is highly elastic. During the epidemic period, Shanghai implemented a citywide closed management, with residents basically not moving but completely closed in their residential areas. However, the mutual allocation of raw and fresh front-end warehouses is difficult due to the blocking of the logistics system, making the inventory of front-end warehouses basically only available to surrounding communities. This provides a suitable scenario for this study, where the capacity and population distribution of the facility sites are basically static, and it is possible to fully study whether the facility can truly meet the needs of the population served in this state.

Therefore, with the help of specific scenarios, this study can more realistically reflect the coupling relationship between facilities and population, and reflect the problems existing in the resilience and sustainable operation of cities.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The paper is scientifically sound and deals with a topic that we have all experienced firsthand in some form, so it a rather interesting read.

The title itself could do some work to be more in the spirit of the English language. Perhaps a change to something like this could be possible?

Study on the distribution of fresh food support system -- An Example of Shanghai during the epidemic closure of 2022

Since fresh pre-warehouses are critical to the understanding of the paper, it would be good for the authors to further elaborate on their workings in the literature review.

Personally, I find it odd that all pre-warehouses are treated as if they have the same facilities, and physical capacities to handle the requirements set before them, particularly in the high density urban areas where storage space is at a premium. While the results of the study, and the conclusions it presents are still true despite this fact, I think that the potential inadequate facilities of some of these warehouses would further compound the issue that the authors are implying exists. Perhaps you could further elaborate on this in the paper?

In the suggestions part of the paper, there are quite a few suggesions, most of them have hardly anything to do with the data presented, or the conclusions made in this paper. It would be good to remove the suggestions which have nothing to do with the paper.

Likewise, in the suggestions you cite some emergency cases and difficulties that have happened during the lockdown, would you mind adding some references to this if at all possible.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions, which are very helpful for our research.

1、The paper is scientifically sound and deals with a topic that we have all experienced firsthand in some form, so it a rather interesting read.The title itself could do some work to be more in the spirit of the English language. Perhaps a change to something like this could be possible?Study on the distribution of fresh food support system -- An Example of Shanghai during the epidemic closure of 2022

Modification: The title has been modified.

2、Since fresh pre-warehouses are critical to the understanding of the paper, it would be good for the authors to further elaborate on their workings in the literature review.

Revision: In the second paragraph of the article, add an explanation of pre warehouse and what categories are included in the pre warehouse discussed in this article.

3、Personally, I find it odd that all pre-warehouses are treated as if they have the same facilities, and physical capacities to handle the requirements set before them, particularly in the high density urban areas where storage space is at a premium. While the results of the study, and the conclusions it presents are still true despite this fact, I think that the potential inadequate facilities of some of these warehouses would further compound the issue that the authors are implying exists. Perhaps you could further elaborate on this in the paper?

Modification: The suggested content has been adjusted as a whole.

Suggestions

6.1 Establishing a flexible fresh food supply guarantee system

6.2Guaranteeing supply should be closely integrated with population distribution and characteristics

6.3Increasing coordination while ensuring the independence of pre-warehouses

6.4 Construct a comprehensive mechanism for risk assessment and research

4、Likewise, in the suggestions you cite some emergency cases and difficulties that have happened during the lockdown, would you mind adding some references to this if at all possible.

Modification: Removed some news articles describing the situation during the blockade, and added references to media or news reports.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The paper deals with very interesting analysis of fresh e-commerce in the city of Shanghai in the Covid 19 period.

However, my main concerns are following:

- the literature seems to be lacking, missing additional sources form the field. Web pages are usually not cited in scientific work.

- authors have failed to demonstrate their scientific contribution to the field, using existing programme features for the analysis. Although this is interesting, it does not contribute to the scientific soundness.

- How is you research generally applicable? It is very focused on the Shanghai, which can be used to demonstrate how your model, methodology or calculation is applicable. General scientific contribution is unclear.

- Hypothesis, goals, objectives of the research?

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions, which are very helpful for our research.

1、The paper deals with very interesting analysis of fresh e-commerce in the city of Shanghai in the Covid 19 period.However, my main concerns are following:- the literature seems to be lacking, missing additional sources form the field. Web pages are usually not cited in scientific work.

Modification: The content of literature review has been added, and some references to web pages have been deleted. At the same time, the currently retained web page references are mainly news released through the internet at that time.

2.1 The fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse and urban sustainability

2.2 Research on facility configuration

2.3Research on population scale and facility distribution

With the development of research, both domestic and foreign researchers have found that population and spatial scale are fundamental factors affecting the allocation of urban service facilities[21].Therefore, the standard research of urban service facility configuration mainly focuses on population size and service space range. In addition, relevant studies have classified living circle levels according to different population size and space scale based on actual urban cases to analyze the living circle service facility configuration standards of different units.

At the end of 2015, Shanghai proposed the basic community unit of “15-minute community living circle” during the new round of master planning, and released “Shanghai Municipal People's Government. Shanghai planning guidance of 15-minute community-life circle” in 2016[22], which not only guides the preparation and implementation of various community level plans in Shanghai, but also provides a very significant reference criterion for the constructure of communities in cities all over the country[23].The theory of ”15 minute community living circle” has become a research focus in the field of urban planning to explore the characteristics of urban sustainability and resilience, and has been widely used in the effective allocation of urban public service facilities.

With the development of the research method, scholars has further deepened the research on public service facilities, and the quantitative analysis of the sustainability of facility configuration with the help of spatial data processing tools such as econometric model and ArcGIS has been gradually enriched[24]. For example, taking the 15-minute walking distance as the dividing boundary, ArcGIS was used to analyze the suitability of the living circle facilities configuration of different levels of population size[25], or to quantitatively study the spatial coordination of the distribution of population and facilities[26]. However, the spatial units of these studies are basically administrative districts. In order to further promote the sustainability of urban facilities, the researchers used big data tools to transition the study subjects into smaller research units. The relevant researches construct suitable analysis grid based on the Autonavi POI facility point[27], Baidu thermal data[28]and GPS data[29] to explore the actual supply of various facilities and the adaptation of residents’ demands.

The following conclusion are obtained by combing the literature on the development of fresh e-commerce platforms and infrastructure configuration. First of all, fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse is a significant part for the construction of urban basic living material, and a necessity for future urban sustainable public infrastructure. At the same time, a large number of studies evaluated the facility coverage from the demand-side perspective of population size, but there is a lack of research on the supply side. Furthermore, the theory of "15-minute living circle" has become an important criterion for studying the allocation of urban facilities in the field of urban planning.

Based on the above researches, it is of great significance to evaluate the service and sustainable development ability of fresh e-commerce platform as urban infrastructure from the perspective of supply side. The sustainability and accessibility costs on the supply side of Infrastructure are respectively related to the population size and spatial scale of the service area. Therefore, this paper takes the service population size[30] and space scale[31] of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse as the main indicators, based on the population data of Baidu Heat Map and the POI data of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse, comprehensively analyzes the suitability degree of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in 101 streets of central city of Shanghai, and discusses the sustainability and service cost of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse, which finally provides operable ideas for the configuration method of public service infrastructure.

2、 authors have failed to demonstrate their scientific contribution to the field, using existing programme features for the analysis. Although this is interesting, it does not contribute to the scientific soundness.How is you research generally applicable? It is very focused on the Shanghai, which can be used to demonstrate how your model, methodology or calculation is applicable. General scientific contribution is unclear.Hypothesis, goals, objectives of the research?

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)

The paper is well written, nevertheless some improvement in English and format are needed.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions, which are very helpful for our research.

The paper is well written, nevertheless some improvement in English and format are needed.

Revsion:Thanks for the suggestion.The text of the article has been revised to make it more consistent with the requirements of publication.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report (New Reviewer)

The work discusses the adaptability of the pre-ware- house of fresh e-commerce in the central city of Shanghai, analyzes the use of such facilities as the basic material supply node of urban residents, and constructs the material support system of the resilient city that meets the principle of sustainability.

However, the population heat map data used by the manuscript comes from the epidemic period, and the phenomenon of insufficient supply capacity, adaptation or excess reflected in such extreme data analysis is not representative in the post-epidemic era. It is suggested to add relevant data in the post-epidemic era to analyze the supply capacity of the daily supply system and compare with the existing data, which is more representative and valuable.

It should be noted that the less references in the introduction make it hard to judge where relevant concepts came from. Especially, could you please explain in more detail what is urban resilience. So, it would be important to increase existing literature (to be added in introduction).

The literature review section needs to be improved. “The development status of fresh e-commerce” should not be included in the literature review.

The manuscript researches “Distribution of Fresh Food Support System”, which should play a role in both daily and emergency situations. Therefore, it is recommended to discuss this practical application value in “Results and Discussions” or “Conclusion”.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions, which are very helpful for our research.The text of the article has been revised to make it more consistent with the requirements of publication.

1、The work discusses the adaptability of the pre-ware- house of fresh e-commerce in the central city of Shanghai, analyzes the use of such facilities as the basic material supply node of urban residents, and constructs the material support system of the resilient city that meets the principle of sustainability.

Explanation: The background of this article is that due to the closure of the epidemic in Shanghai, the logistics and distribution of fresh food across regions has been stopped, and residents' living needs are basically dependent on the supply of warehouses near their homes. The reason why the study selected a closed epidemic period for population distribution research is that the population distribution in this closed state is the closest to a true and stable residential distribution (because the population has no mobility), which is helpful for calculating the basic amount proposed in the article to meet the urban resilience needs. However, due to the large population flow and the convenience of cross regional logistics distribution in daily situations, it may not be possible to measure the basic amount of resilience demand.

2、It should be noted that the less references in the introduction make it hard to judge where relevant concepts came from. Especially, could you please explain in more detail what is urban resilience. So, it would be important to increase existing literature (to be added in introduction).The literature review section needs to be improved. “The development status of fresh e-commerce” should not be included in the literature review.

Revision: In the literature review, add the literature on urban resilience and reduce the literature review on the development of Le1 fresh e-commerce.

2.1 The fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse and urban sustainability

2.2 Research on facility configuration

2.3Research on population scale and facility distribution

3、The manuscript researches “Distribution of Fresh Food Support System”, which should play a role in both daily and emergency situations. Therefore, it is recommended to discuss this practical application value in “Results and Discussions” or “Conclusion”.

Revision:In the results and discussion, add:

This article takes Shanghai as an example to understand how the distribution of facilities can effectively ensure the lives of residents through spatial fitting of the two elements of population and facilities in large cities. The facilities here take the fresh front warehouse as the research object, and through this fitting, express the elements that should be paid attention to in terms of zoning, classification, and classification of facilities in large cities. However, in daily times, this study will face two uncertain factors. One is the large flow of urban population, especially the changes in residential and living locations, which makes the service objects of the fresh food front warehouse unable to accurately correspond to the residential population of the region; The second is that raw and fresh front-end warehouses can easily obtain material distribution and replenishment through urban logistics, and their supply capacity is highly elastic. During the epidemic period, Shanghai implemented a citywide closed management, with residents basically not moving but completely closed in their residential areas. However, the mutual allocation of raw and fresh front-end warehouses is difficult due to the blocking of the logistics system, making the inventory of front-end warehouses basically only available to surrounding communities. This provides a suitable scenario for this study, where the capacity and population distribution of the facility sites are basically static, and it is possible to fully study whether the facility can truly meet the needs of the population served in this state.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

In my opinion, authors have not completely adressed all of the rewievers comments and issues. Reference list is lacking international and broader literature from the field, research structure is still narrow - which is a shame because of the topic that would be interesting to a broader public.

Author Response

Authors’ Answer:

Thank you for your suggestions. We have further revised the paper to add an elaboration of the relationship between urban public service facilities and urban sustainability from the perspective of improving the intention of the paper. It is hoped that the paper will be able to discuss the resilience and sustainability of a city from a coupled analysis of the spatial distribution of facilities and population.

The following text was added to the introductory section of the article:

“In the study of urban resilience, optimization of urban public service facilities is an important foundation for achieving environmental sustainability and social equity[4]. Such optimization requires a balance of economic, environmental and social factors. On the economic side, urban public service facilities need to allocate resources rationally to ensure sustained growth of the city's economy. On the environmental side, urban public service facilities need to strengthen environmental awareness and protect the ecological environment. In the social aspect, urban public service facilities need to meet people's living needs and ensure social stability. This paper attempts to explore the relationship between urban raw material supply facilities and sustainable urban development, using the experience of Shanghai during the 2022 epidemic.”

In the results and discussion section of the article, an analysis of the reasons for several situations where demand cannot be met is added, which leads to the central point of the discussion in this paper - that the resilience and sustainability of cities are better demonstrated during special times. This explains why this paper goes to the issue of coupling the distribution of facilities and population during the epidemic closure, rather than in the daily state. It is possible that the authors did not elaborate this part clearly before, making the article less intentional.

The following text has been adjusted and added to the discussion section:

“Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)This article takes Shanghai as an example to understand how the distribution of facilities can effectively ensure the lives of residents through spatial fitting of the two elements of population and facilities in large cities. The facilities here take the fresh food front storage as the research object, and through this fitting, we express the elements that should be paid attention to in terms of zoning, classification, and classification of facilities in large cities. From the results of this paper's analysis, the main reason for the undersupply of front-end warehouses is that the area covered by its space is not as large as it should be, as well as the size of the population within its coverage area exceeds the set size. However, in daily times, this study will face two uncertain factors. One is the large flow of urban population, especially the changes in residential and living locations, which makes the service objects of the fresh food front warehouse unable to accurately correspond to the residential population of the region; The second is that raw and fresh front-end warehouses can easily obtain material distribution and replenishment through urban logistics, and their supply capacity is highly elastic. During the epidemic period, Shanghai implemented a citywide closed management, with residents basically not moving but completely closed in their residential areas. However, the mutual allocation of raw and fresh front-end warehouses is difficult due to the blocking of the logistics system, making the inventory of front-end warehouses basically only available to surrounding communities. This provides a suitable scenario for this study, where the capacity and population distribution of the facility sites are basically static, and it is possible to fully study whether the facility can truly meet the needs of the population served in this state.

In the analysis of the results, we found that most of the problematic front-end warehouse locations are located at the edge of the central city (Figure 11, Figure 12), which echoes the correlation between urban utility configurations and the economic, environmental and social and sustainability of the city mentioned in the introduction of this paper. Residents living on streets at the edge of the central city are generally not as economically strong as those inside the central city, and therefore have lower daily demand for fresh food, which may reduce the willingness of fresh food e-commerce companies to set up front warehouses there. This may not have much impact in normal times, because the lack of distribution can be compensated by logistics distribution between different regional warehouses, but once the logistics is interrupted and needs to run itself there will be a shortage of supply. So, this actually relates to urban sustainability and urban resilience, as this can only really show up in special circumstances.”

With regard to the literature section, the original references were indeed more narrowly cited because of the mainly domestic issues discussed. The authors have further revised the main part of the literature review by adding 13 additional papers to make the literature review cover a wider range.

We hope our revision can meet your expectation, thank you very much again.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Authors have made effort and I wish them good luck with further research!

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

This paper presented an observation and Research on Urban Fresh Food Support System Based on E-commerce Platform, Taking Shanghai as An Example During the Period of Epidemic Closure in 2022. This submission has a potential to provide further understanding to both academics and practitioners interested in E-commerce Platforms during the Period of the pandemic closure. However, some comments need to be incorporated.

· The researchers should briefly present the research methodology (observation -content analysis), data collection, and results in the abstract.

· Section 2 should be titled as the (2. Literature review) instead of (2. Current research progress).

· The researchers should clarify the (POI) data stands for what?

· More up-to-date related studies should be cited to support this submission especially in 2021 and 2022.

· The language of the paper needs a careful editing.

Author Response

1、The researchers should briefly present the research methodology (observation -content analysis), data collection, and results in the abstract.

Authors:Thank you very much for your comments. We have carefully revised the abstract to elaborate the research methodology (observation-content analysis), data collection and results in the abstract, revision as follows:

Abstract: Covering residents’ demands during the period of public health emergencies is one critical measure of city’s sustainability and resilience. During the period of urban closure caused by COVID19 epidemic, online shopping becomes the most important method of material support in the city. This paper establishes the evaluation model of urban basic material support system using the distribution data of city’s fresh e-commerce platform and population, to explore the potential sustainability of the city. Taking the central city of Shanghai as the research area，this paper uses population heat map with geographical coordinates to reflect the distribution of residents. At the same time, obtain the distribution map of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouses, and use the kernel density analysis method in ArcGIS tool to calculate the core density. Through the superposition comparison between the core density of the pre-warehouse and the population distribution, this paper tries to determine the spatial relationship between the pre-warehouse and the residents’ needs. Through analysis, it is found that supply capacity presents three types: insufficient, appropriate and surplus, and the paper gives improvement strategies according to these three conditions. At last, the paper proposes the suggestion to establish a scientific supply security system to promote the sustainability of the city and well prepared for the next challenge.

2、Section 2 should be titled as the (2. Literature review) instead of (2. Current research progress).

Authors:Thank you for the title suggestion. We have revised the heading of section 2 to “2. Literature review”;and divide the argument into two parts “2.1 The development status of fresh e-commerce” and “Research on facility configuration”.

3、The researchers should clarify the (POI) data stands for what?

Authors: We defined POI data in Section 3.2.2：

POI data is the core data of location-based services widely used in electronic map which is short for “Point of Interest” or “Point of Information”.

4、More up-to-date related studies should be cited to support this submission especially in 2021 and 2022.

Authors: Thank you very much for your valuable advice. Based on your comments, in 2.1 of the Literature review, we have elaborated the role of fresh food e-commerce in the containment period of the epidemic from 2020 to 2022:

The research on the location of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse has been widely concerned by scholar, most of which focus on the goal of minimizing costs, suh as the rot-ten cost of food[9,10], carbon emission cost[11] and customer satisfaction[12].However, with the advent of the post-epidemic era leading to home consumption, the status signifi-cance of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in urban infrastructure has changed signifi-cantly, which has begun to assume the responsibility as the node of the urban material support system in emergency situations. In 2020, during the epidemic in Wuhan, all kinds of commercial supermarkets and fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse have demonstrated their ability to guarantee people’s livelihood and their potential as the node of the emer-gency supply system in megacities[13]. In 2021, after a new round of COVID-19 broke out, Heihe City of Heilongjiang Province, Shijiazhuang City of Hebei Province, Lanzhou City of Gansu Province, Hefei City of Anhui Province and many other places provided daily necessities for residents through fresh e-commerce platforms[14]. What’s more, During the outbreak of the COVID-19 in Shanghai in 2022, the role of fresh food e-commerce platform in ensuring residents' daily necessities was once again reflected, and the government also issued relevant announcements to release the supply guarantee capacity of e-commerce platform.

5、The language of the paper needs a careful editing

Authors:Thank you for your comments.

Thank you for your comments. We have reorganized the article and edited the language.We have now worked on both language and readability. We really hope that the flow and language level have been substantially improved.

The yellow part that has been revised according to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Limited references has been mentioned and no reference of any such study in other parts of the world has been mentioned.

What is the criteria of selection of 15 minutes time period is not clearly justified?

No relation of the study is done with regards to Sustainability which makes it a weak candidate for this journal.

Author Response

1、Limited references has been mentioned and no reference of any such study in other parts of the world has been mentioned.

Authors：

Thanks for your valuable suggestions, we have added a discussion on the development trend and importance of e-commerce platforms in section2.1(The development status of fresh e-commerce):

“Since the development of e-commerce, China’s fresh e-commerce market has developed rapidly, whose market growth rate remains at more than 50% per year. At present, the fresh e-commerce industry has entered a period of stable development[7].

At the same time, the fresh e-commerce warehouse discussed in this paper belongs to urban facility. Therefore, the relevant facility configuration of the city is also discussed in section 2.2(Research on facility configuration)：

“At the urban planning discussion meeting on responding to public health emergencies such as COVID-19 with the theme of “improving urban immunity”, Scholars have proposed that a strong infrastructure is the prerequisite to deal with urban public health emergencies ,and improving the constructure of public service facilities is a significant measure to improve the sustainability and resilience of modern cities, meanwhile, the effective allocation of urban public service facilities is the focus[15] .

With the development of research, both domestic and foreign researchers have found that population and spatial scale are fundamental factors affecting the allocation of urban service facilities[19-21].Therefore, the standard research of urban service facility configuration mainly focuses on population size and service space range. In addition, relevant studies have classified living circle levels according to different population size and space scale based on actual urban cases to analyze the living circle service facility configuration standards of different units.

At the end of 2015, Shanghai proposed the basic community unit of “15-minute community living circle” during the new round of master planning, and released “Shanghai Municipal People's Government. Shanghai planning guidance of 15-minute community-life circle” in 2016[22], which not only guides the preparation and implementation of various community level plans in Shanghai, but also provides a very significant reference criterion for the constructure of communities in cities all over the country[23].The theory of ”15 minute community living circle” has become a research focus in the field of urban planning to explore the characteristics of urban sustainability and resilience, and has been widely used in the effective allocation of urban public service facilities.

With the development of the research method, scholars has further deepened the research on public service facility facilities, and the quantitative analysis of the sustainability of facility configuration with the help of spatial data processing tools such as econometric model and ArcGIS has been gradually enriched[24]. For example, taking the 15-minute walking distance as the dividing boundary, ArcGIS was used to analyze the suitability of the living circle facilities configuration of different levels of population size[25], or to quantitatively study the spatial coordination of the distribution of population and facilities[26]. However, the spatial units of these studies are basically administrative districts. In order to further promote the sustainability of urban facilities, the researchers used big data tools to transition the study subjects into smaller research units. The relevant researches construct suitable analysis grid based on the Autonavi POI facility point[27], Baidu thermal data[28]and GPS data[29] to explore the actual supply of various facilities and the adaptation of residents’ demands.”

2、What is the criteria of selection of 15 minutes time period is not clearly justified?

Auhtors：In the section 2.2(Research on facility configuration), we explained the significance of choosing 15 minutes as the standard through the literature review of the 15-minute life circle theory：

“With the development of research, both domestic and foreign researchers have found that population and spatial scale are fundamental factors affecting the allocation of urban service facilities[19-21].Therefore, the standard research of urban service facility configuration mainly focuses on population size and service space range. In addition, relevant studies have classified living circle levels according to different population size and space scale based on actual urban cases to analyze the living circle service facility configuration standards of different units.

3、No relation of the study is done with regards to Sustainability which makes it a weak candidate for this journal。

Authors:It really appreciate for your precious suggestion. Based on this comment, we have added the expound about “sustainability of urban infrastructure”:

"The sustainability of urban infrastructure refers to the fact that the facilities sustain function and maintain long-term use value with the progress of society on the basis of safety, effectiveness and durability[5]."

At the same time, urban resilience means being resilient and adaptable, which is closely related to sustainability. The discussion on urban resilience has already been partially mentioned in the text，In addition, we also added the reference to "sustainability". The relevant content is as follows：

"The guarantee ability of basic living materials under the public health emergencies is one of the important criteria to measure the sustainability and resilience of cities.

As the same as other commercial facilities, the key point to maintain the sustainability of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse is to obtain enough economic benefits to keep its own operation on the premise of meeting the needs of consumers.

The theory of ”15 minute community living circle” has become a research focus in the field of urban planning to explore the characteristics of urban sustainability and resilience, and has been widely used in the effective allocation of urban public service facilities.

The sustainability and accessibility costs on the supply side of Infrastructure are respectively related to the population size and spatial scale of the service area.”

Finally, the “6.suggestion” and “7.conclusion” of the article also add a discussion on "sustainability"：

“The combination of "unit guarantee " and "regional coordination" emphasizes the embodiment of urban resilience and sustainability on the whole and part.

It should be said that the fresh e-commerce platform has become an important guarantee force for urban operation, and its effective allocation helps to improve the resilience and sustainability of cities, which can cope with sudden changes.

At the same time, the e-commerce platform needs not only to consider the material supply capacity in emergency, but also to take into account the sustainability of its own economic benefits in normal times.

Through similar researches, it is helpful for us to better observe the layout principles of urban e-commerce pre-warehouses, discover the weak areas in urban e-commerce net-works in time, and take a series of measures such as adding distribution points, increasing inventory and increasing capacity in time, so as to enhance the resilience and sustainability of cities."

The yellow part that has been revised according to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

It is a balanced work, well organized and clear in its analysis. The methodological approach is appropriate to the object of study, although the results can be anticipated (at least part of the results) in the presentation of the problem. However, it is a very interesting approach. In my opinion, it could be interesting to offer more socio-spatial context (including political-administrative aspects), the description of Shanghai (in the analyzed rings) is general and functional to the results, but the type of discussion and conclusions could be enriched with more information about the city and its critical nodes or critical aspects.

There are two other aspects that could be improved. On one hand, the literature cited and references are limited, it could be useful to refer to research results on the distribution of basic goods and food in other contexts during and after covid 19. It seems to me that this could be improved and even contribute to the discussion.

On the other hand, I do not see clarity in the use of the concept of sustainability. In what sense is it being used? I consider that this should be improved, and be more explicit in the conceptualization of the problem, and of course in the discussion of the results.

Author Response

1、It is a balanced work, well organized and clear in its analysis. The methodological approach is appropriate to the object of study, although the results can be anticipated (at least part of the results) in the presentation of the problem. However, it is a very interesting approach. In my opinion, it could be interesting to offer more socio-spatial context (including political-administrative aspects), the description of Shanghai (in the analyzed rings) is general and functional to the results, but the type of discussion and conclusions could be enriched with more information about the city and its critical nodes or critical aspects.

Authors：Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. Based on this comment, we have listed the critical nodes or critical aspects in the "5.Results and Discussion". Meanwhile, as the research tends to be macroscopic, we put forward the general suggestions and make specific arrangements for specific nodes in the “6.suggestions”：

”The e-commerce pre-warehouses in these area are densely distributed with small service area, such as Freshshippo (Dapuqiao SML Center) and Tramy Fresh (Zaoyang Road Store) in the study area, whose service areas mainly involve Dapuqiao Street and Cao Yang Xincun Street.

This situation is generally found in the marginal area with low population density in central city of Shanghai, where the e-commerce pre-warehouses is scattered, so the spatial scale of the service areas is too large. Songnan Town in Baoshan District, Shanggang Xin-cun Street, Beicai Town, Zhangjiang Town, Zhangjiang High-tech Park, Jinqiao Town, Gaohang Town and Hudong Xincun Street in Pudong New Area all belong to this cate-gory.

There are 10 fresh e-commerce pre-warehouses in the research area. For example, the main service area of RT Mart (Kangqiao Store) in Pudong New Area radiates to Kangqiao Town, and the main service area of Yonghui Supermarket (Jinqiu Xintiandi Store) in Baoshan District is Dachang Town. The population size and spatial scale of these fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse are beyond the standard value.

Establish basic unit guarantee and regional coordination mechanism. During the closure period of Shanghai, due to the restriction of trans regional traffic, the material se-curity supply was basically organized by the authorities of street (town), even if the adja-cent road belonged to two administrative units, the supply would be much different. This reminds the urban authorities to take the street or community as the basic unit when es-tablishing the security supply system, and to build a minimum operating unit to maintain the basic functions. At the same time, a coordination and mutual assistance mechanism should be established between different units to maintain orderly collaborative progress under certain rules and scale. The combination of "unit guarantee " and "regional coordi-nation" emphasizes the embodiment of urban resilience and sustainability on the whole and part. In the face of major public emergencies, urban units should have both the ability to "survive by themselves" and "take the overall situation into account" to achieve the op-timal allocation of limited urban resources.“

2、There are two other aspects that could be improved. On one hand, the literature cited and references are limited, it could be useful to refer to research results on the distribution of basic goods and food in other contexts during and after covid 19. It seems to me that this could be improved and even contribute to the discussion.

Authors：Thanks a lot. We have modified the Section2, adding the literature cited and references on the distribution of basic goods and food in other contexts during and after covid 19:

"The research on the location of the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse has been widely concerned by scholar, most of which focus on the goal of minimizing costs, suh as the rot-ten cost of food[9,10], carbon emission cost[11] and customer satisfaction[12].However, with the advent of the post-epidemic era leading to home consumption, the status signifi-cance of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in urban infrastructure has changed signifi-cantly, which has begun to assume the responsibility as the node of the urban material support system in emergency situations. In 2020, during the epidemic in Wuhan, all kinds of commercial supermarkets and fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse have demonstrated their ability to guarantee people’s livelihood and their potential as the node of the emer-gency supply system in megacities[13]. In 2021, after a new round of COVID-19 broke out, Heihe City of Heilongjiang Province, Shijiazhuang City of Hebei Province, Lanzhou City of Gansu Province, Hefei City of Anhui Province and many other places provided daily necessities for residents through fresh e-commerce platforms[14]. What’s more, During the outbreak of the COVID-19 in Shanghai in 2022, the role of fresh food e-commerce platform in ensuring residents' daily necessities was once again reflected, and the government also issued relevant announcements to release the supply guarantee capacity of e-commerce platform.

These cases all show the feasibility of fresh e-commerce as a part of the urban basic material support system. In addition, its guarantee role should be taken into key consider-ation when conducting research on the location of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in the post epidemic era."

3、On the other hand, I do not see clarity in the use of the concept of sustainability. In what sense is it being used? I consider that this should be improved, and be more explicit in the conceptualization of the problem, and of course in the discussion of the results.

Authors：Thank you for your precious suggestion. Based on this comment, we have added the expound about “sustainability of urban infrastructure”：

”The sustainability of urban infrastructure refers to the fact that the facilities sustain function and maintain long-term use value with the progress of society on the basis of safety, effectiveness and durability[5].“

What’s more, urban resilience means being resilient and adaptable, which is closely related to sustainability. The discussion on urban resilience has already been partially mentioned in the text，In addition, we also added the reference to "sustainability". The relevant content is as follows：

"The guarantee ability of basic living materials under the public health emergencies is one of the important criteria to measure the sustainability and resilience of cities.

The sustainability and accessibility costs on the supply side of Infrastructure are respectively related to the population size and spatial scale of the service area."

Finally, the “6.suggestion” and “7.conclusion” of the article also add a discussion on "sustainability":

”The combination of "unit guarantee " and "regional coordination" emphasizes the embodiment of urban resilience and sustainability on the whole and part.

The yellow part that has been revised according to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The topic is very interesting and important under nowadays uncertain environment. While there maybe some further efforts to refine the paper.

1. The literature review currently were about spacial research on public facilities or location analysis research. Fresh online platform are mostly e-commerce industry, thus I suggest the authors may add some of the related e-commerce or online retail industry research papers in the review. So that the readers could fully know the research progress in this area.

2. There would be some mistakes in some of the fresh platforms' name in table 1. And， if the authors could access the effects of some of the government daily material supply security system established in the lockdown period with Kuaituantuan, we could have more detail and deepen inspection about urban resillieance.

Totally , the research topic is great, and the method, data used are proper.

Author Response

1、The literature review currently were about spacial research on public facilities or location analysis research. Fresh online platform are mostly e-commerce industry, thus I suggest the authors may add some of the related e-commerce or online retail industry research papers in the review. So that the readers could fully know the research progress in this area.

Authors：Thank you very much for your valuable advice. In view of this, we have made a careful revision to the Section2. We have revised the heading of section 2 to “2. Literature review”;and divide the argument into two parts “2.1 The development status of fresh e-commerce” and “Research on facility configuration”, and add references to them：

”2.1 The development status of fresh e-commerce

The sustainability of urban infrastructure refers to the fact that the facilities sustain function and maintain long-term use value with the progress of society on the basis of safety, effectiveness and durability[5].Domestic and foreign scholars generally divide urban infrastructure into productive service facilities and social service facilities[6].The object of this paper is the fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse which belongs to the commercial facilities of social service facilities. As the same as other commercial facilities, the key point to maintain the sustainability of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse is to obtain enough economic benefits to keep its own operation on the premise of meeting the needs of consumers.

Since the development of e-commerce, China’s fresh e-commerce market has developed rapidly, whose market growth rate remains at more than 50% per year. At present, the fresh e-commerce industry has entered a period of stable development[7]. Fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse is an innovative model of fresh e-commerce industry under this situation, which is a commodity pre-warehouse based on O2Oservice demand and use the mode of “Urban Distribution Center + Pre-warehouse” with the characteristics such as small scale of 80-100square meters and 3-5 kilometers Radius of radiation[8]. Xu Xin of Capital Today has indicated in the "2019 Dingdong Maicai Supplier Conference" that the company will arrange the pre-warehouse in Shanghai in the future to shorten the delivery time to 15 minutes at the fastest. The coverage of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in the city has gradually reached a certain level to ensure its service ability.

These cases all show the feasibility of fresh e-commerce as a part of the urban basic material support system. In addition, its guarantee role should be taken into key consideration when conducting research on the location of fresh e-commerce pre-warehouse in the post epidemic era.

2.2 Research on facility configuration

With the development of research, both domestic and foreign researchers have found that population and spatial scale are fundamental factors affecting the allocation of urban service facilities[19-21].Therefore, the standard research of urban service facility configuration mainly focuses on population size and service space range. In addition, relevant studies have classified living circle levels according to different population size and space scale based on actual urban cases to analyze the living circle service facility configuration standards of different units.

2、There would be some mistakes in some of the fresh platforms' name in table 1. And， if the authors could access the effects of some of the government daily material supply security system established in the lockdown period with Kuaituantuan, we could have more detail and deepen inspection about urban resillieance.

Authors：Thank you for your valuable comment. We have modified the fresh platforms' name in table 1.

Table 1. Online Platform Table for Residents to Purchase Materials.

Online mode	E-commerce platform
E-commerce platform	Freshshippo, DingdongMaicai, Meituan, MISSFRESH, Pinduoduo,ELEME, JD daojia, TmallMart, Dmall, BenlaiLife, Yimishiji, Epermarket, Meicai Mall, Caidaosuan, 7FRESH, Green & Safe, FAST AND FRESH
Supermarket's own platform	Century Mart, Carrefour, ALDI, RT-FRESH, Sam's Club, Brilliance, ole Supermarket, Tramy Fresh, Metro, Cityshop Super, YH Life, G-Super,Pagoda
Direct supply from place of origin	(Need group purchase and have distribut ion scale)

In the Section2, we clarified the government's advocacy of taking fresh food platform as part of residents' material support system during the lockdown period:

Moreover, in the Section6(6.suggestions), we put forward the formation of “a variety of guarantee supply channels with the government as the main force and the market as the auxiliary force” and other relevant suggestions：

”A variety of guarantee supply channels should be formed with the government as the main force and the market as the auxiliary force. The pre-warehouses of e-commerce platforms analyzed in this paper are most market-based platforms. During the lockdown period of the epidemic in Shanghai, the urban authorities also set up a series of security supply points to ensure the daily necessities for citizens. From this perspective, Shanghai has explored a security supply system under emergency conditions with the government as the main force and the market as the auxiliary force. The government guarantees the bottom line of basic daily necessities and food, while the personalized needs of citizens are met by market-oriented commercial platforms. In terms of supply channels, more enterprises, institutions, NGOs and other organizations can be introduced under emergency conditions to jointly participate in ensuring supply, so as to break down the pressure.

Establish a resilient and sustainable system of daily and emergency-level supplies.

The urban authorities should conduct risk assessment and simulate the material security process, etc. in the normal urban operation, and try to establish an effec-tive, resilient and sustainable “daily-emergency” two-level material supply system.

Establish basic unit guarantee and regional coordination mechanism. During the closure period of Shanghai, due to the restriction of trans regional traffic, the material security supply was basically organized by the authorities of street (town), even if the adjacent road belonged to two administrative units, the supply would be much different. This reminds the urban authorities to take the street or community as the basic unit when establishing the security supply system, and to build a minimum operating unit to maintain the basic functions. At the same time, a coordination and mutual assistance mechanism should be established between different units to maintain orderly collaborative progress under certain rules and scale. The combination of "unit guarantee " and "regional coordination" emphasizes the embodiment of urban resilience and sustainability on the whole and part. In the face of major public emergencies, urban units should have both the ability to "survive by themselves" and "take the overall situation into account" to achieve the optimal allocation of limited urban resources.“

The yellow part that has been revised according to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

This article is not suitable for sustainability journal as more focus is towards supply chain and no connection has been shown with sustainability.

Hypotheses can be formed to make the paper more sound technically.

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Study on the Distribution of Fresh Food Support System—An Example of Shanghai during the Epidemic Closure of 2022

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