Water Use Inequality and Efficiency Assessments in the Yangtze River Economic Delta of China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall, a very good draft of research that needs to be published and the results will be of interest to peer scientists world wide.
Although the English grammar and spelling was in general very good, some improvements are needed. As examples (there are probably more):
line 38 after 2100m3 the addition "which is"
line 45 capital I in Inequaility
line 61 delete "the unavailability of"and change sufficient to insufficient
line 107 change Little to Few
lines 219 verb agreement with data... the word data is the plural form of datum. The authors have the verb as if it is singular. this is a grammar correction a lot of word processing programs do not correct.
the authors should consider taking lines 232 to 238 and placing this info in the introduction after the first sentence in the paragraph beginning with 77. An introduction to the Gini coefficient is needed in the introduction.
Overall an enjoyable paper to read because the English was very well constructed and the results were of interest to this reviewer, who has an interest in water policy but it is not the primary function of his research.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Dear colleagues,
please completely rewrite the introduction to better present your results whih seems sound to me. In case they are not excellent they could/will be used as support for further investigation. Major revisions are recommanded!
Please see in the attachment.
Sincerely,
Reviewer
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
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Reviewer 3 Report
The paper highlights water use inequality in 35 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China. The paper is interesting but needs some modifications before it actually gets published.
The abstract is confusing as it does not reflect the water use inequality assessment as a whole. For instance, the statement “No city showed high inequality” will make readers wondering that the study concluded no high inequality as opposed to the objective of the study that is to find high inequality [also mentioned in the title]. Also seems like water use efficiency is a major part of the study but does not reflect in the title.
The input data section needs to be expanded, and discussion is needed on the uncertainty of the data. The significance of input data on the output should be emphasized. You may consider citing studies like Singh, G., and Kumar, E. 2017. Input data scale impacts on modeling output results: A review. Journal of Spatial Hydrology, 13(1).
Mostly the Gini and Morans Index is discussed in the introduction, try to discuss more indices and any potential models.
Please include details for projects for future work.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear colleagues, with your revisions you have just lengthen the text, without any structural change. For example, the introduction has more than 2500 words and is not logically structured.
I recommend rejection.
Sincerely,
Reviewer X
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
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
Review of manuscript
“Water use inequality assessments of 35 cities in the Yangtze River Economic belt using Gini coefficient and Moran’s index”
By Babuna, Yang and Dehui
The manuscript is an assessment of the water use inequality in the Yangtze River Economic belt, in China. The specific objectives are the estimation of the water use efficiency, the inequality in water use as well as the categorization of the level of inequality. In general, it is an interesting topic and appropriate for WATER. However, I recommend that the manuscript is rejected for the following reasons:
- The data and methodology are not fully explained and justified – The authors used the GINI coefficient and the Global Moran Index to calculate inequality. First of all, the manuscript does not have a definition of the term “water use inequality”. How do the authors define inequality? Why are these two indices appropriate to show inequality? From what I see the Gini Coefficient is the portion of the curve that fits a distribution over the data of water resources allocation. Which data have been used (they say water consumption)? how do they fit the regression analysis? is it done at the city level or for all the cities? How much water is needed per water use (so we can see if there is a gap and this water is allocated to another use)? All of these are questions that are not answered in the manuscript. The authors have not done a proper literature review. What are other methods to study inequality in the literature? Also, the terms in the equation are not explained. What do we learn from Moran’s index? How is the spatial autocorrelations help to estimate inequality? How is the classification in Figure 2 done? How were the 9 types defined? Did they use certain ranges of the Gini and Μoran values to define the boundaries? It seems to me that they are arbitrary.
Also, the “water use efficiency” has not been defined. Efficiency in terms of what? Are we talking about efficiency in delivering the water, i.e. not loosing it? And if that is the case, if a city has inefficient water system and does not have enough water, how does it affect the degree of inequality? I see that almost 50% of the cities have a water efficiency less than 30%.
It appears that only water use efficiency has been considered to affect inequality and other drivers mentioned in the manuscript have not.
- The conclusions are not meaningful – I do not see how the conclusions can help the cities to improve inequality. The categorization of inequality types is arbitrary and the recommendations on how to improve inequality appear without prior analysis and presentation of data.
- The writing of the manuscript is confusing – The use of the English language in many places of the manuscript is vague and confusing.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear colleagues,
Your manuscript lacks the methodology and his history in its introduction (mandatory). You can also make the conclusions shorter (facultative).
Minor revisions are recommanded!
Sincerely,
Reviewer X
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents a study determining water use inequality in 35 cities in China, using indices.
The paper needs major revision in order to be publishable.
The authors can find some of my comments in the annotated manuscript.
Additionally:
- the authors should provide definitions for terms such as "water use efficiency". What does this mean? When water supply is higher that water demand in a river basin? Or when water is not lost and wasted? etc.
- the authors should explain all the variables in equations (1) and (2)
- the authors discuss various subjects such as virtual water etc. I think that results and discussion section is too complicated.
- the authors should present the basic data they used to arrive to the calculations presented in the tables and graphs.
- the authors should provide arguments of why their research would be interesting for readers from all over the world.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
