Ant-Inspired Metaheuristic Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems in Water Resources Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article discusses the application of ant colony algorithms in hydrogeological geology, including their variants. However, I find some problems and the paper needs a minor revision for this article before it can be accepted for publication. Below are some detailed comments and suggestions:

1.         The introduction should conclude with a brief description of the article's structure.

2.         Further information regarding the journal impact factor and the number of publications by year can be provided in Chapter 2.

3.         It is recommended that the color of figure 1 corresponds to the number of legends.

 

4.         The presentation of the basic principles of the ant colony algorithm in Chapter 3 should be simplified.

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper mainly introduces the application of ACO algorithms in hydrology and hydrogeology. Literature research and quantitative analysis are carried out. The various variations of ACO algorithms are summarized, and the application of ACO in different problems is illustrated. But there are the following problems:

 1. The logic of the introduction part of this paper is confused. The purpose of this paper has been mentioned several times. For example, lines 34, 63 and 82 are repetitive and can be appropriately deleted.

2. It is better to explain the shortcomings of the previous review literature in lines 74 to 81. You can appropriately add such a description, more detailed about the differences between your paper and the previous review paper.

3. What is the previous relationship between the various ACO variants? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Or what is the scope of use? Please explain.

4. The color legend in Figure 1 is incomplete. Please supplement it.

5. Line 71: "NP-hard", if it is an abbreviation, complete it.

6. Lines 163-165 should be placed after the literature reading analysis, perhaps in section 3. Or at the beginning of section 4, before the introduction of the application.

7. Figure 5 seems to show that there is an application hierarchy, but the description in line 163-165 is inconsistent or not accurate enough.

8. Lines 165-173 should belong to Section 3.2, and the various ACO variants should have their references added for more in-depth reading by interested readers.

 

9. When introducing various applications of ACO in Section 4, it is hoped to increase the relevance among application examples, such as the differences or improvements of ACO in different literature for the same problem.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

General comments.- The authors summarize the main applications of Ant-colony algorithms in water resources field and describe future trends related in combining and developing this technique. The approach of the study is providing a review of the state of art related these optimization tools but I think it needs to be complemented with more in-depth research, as issues are formulated vaguely and with few references. In fact, the authors commented 1500 revised documents but the references included in the tables of the paper are only 29 of them, which means an average of 1.4 papers per year in 2001-2023 period, as suggested in Figure 1. A quick search on Web of Science provides nearly 50 articles related to ant colony algorithms appllied to water management issues only in 2022, pointing out that a deeper understanding should be done. It would also be good to provide a statistic analysys of cites and their evolution in the last decades. Furthermore, the figures are visually compelling but they are more informative and introductory to the use of ant-colony algorithms than suitable to a review paper. I also miss the evolution of its analytical configuration, at least their basic parameters and modification when combining with other techniques.

Specific comments.- 

Title: Add the word "review"  

1. Introduction

Line 71: Define NP. The first time the acronyms appear should be defined. There are several errors of thys type in the document.  

2. Methodology

Lines 93-95: Rewrite, confusing: are the browsers that were made use.....are the browsers that were use.

Lines 97-101: lacks of verb

Lines 102-104: how many articles out of the 1500 documents? Only 29? There are many more. This is the weakest point of the paper that must be corrected.

Figure 1: the coulours in the legend are not the used in the histogram. Caption: clarify which type of publications.   

3. Ant Colony Optimization

Figure 4: add subtitles to each image.

LInes 164-175: add references to the ACO variants.

Figure 6: Delete the title because it is repeated in caption. Delete black column on the left side. The colours of partially-fully- constrained ACO do not appear in the figure. What do they refer to?  

4. Applications of ACOs

Line 200: Hirakud reservoir (add location and reference)

Lines 217-218: CACO had been used before. Revise acronyms.

Lines 217-219: It lacks verb

All tables: Columns S.no. What is it for? Consider delete.

Line 249: to GAs---> Define

Line 292: used by ref.[29].---> delete "ref."

Figure 7: consider delete.

Line 391: demands .Sewer---> demands. Sewer

Lines 401-402:  Confusing. Rewrite.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The author has solved some of the problems raised before and improved the readability of the article. There are still several minor problems to be solved and it is suggested to modify them.

1. The titles in Figure 2 and Figure 3 have display errors. Please check them.

2. Figure 6 does not correspond to the text description in lines 203-206, for example, “Urban drainage network design” in Figure 6. Please check carefully and give the same description.

 

3. Only 8 kinds of applications are described in Figure 6 and lines 203-206, but there are altogether 9 kinds of applications introduced in detail. Why are they inconsistent? Why should the last 6 applications be explained separately from the first 3 applications? Please explain.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

General comments: In this new version the authors have answered the specific comments and modified the paper accordingly. However, my main concerns related to a broader scope of consideration of the articles and studies have been partially taken in account. In fact, methodology section has been modified in order to explain the number of articles finally considered but the authors indicated 141 articles, which does not appear in the new version either. The authors add a new table of new 32 references in order to show the variations of ACO as well as their advantages-disadvantages but these works seem not to be included in Figure 1.  Furthermore, I think this table is too extensive to appear this way and I recommend to discuss the considerations of these references wtthin the text, as a part of methodoloy section and not as a table. 

Moreover, an analysis of statistics related to evolution of ant-algorithms papers is lacking. Figure 1 does not support any tend related to future studies due to the scarce of papers considered. It is not clear if the ant algorithm studies is increasing or decreasing when seeing the figure. 

Additionally, the authors have made several changes that reviewers have not asked previously, but they do not provide a justification of these modifications. Furthermore, it is not clear why there are different letter colours in the new version. The deleted or moved paragraphs are not pointed out, therefore it is complicated to follow the changes made. I suggest to use the track-changes in the text editor. 

Specific comments:  

Title: add the word "review"

Line 90: NP hard---> not defined the acronyms the first time they appear. Revise.

Lines 98-100: avoid opinions. There are many more indexed papers in this period. 

Line 102: only from the year 2001---> there are some papers related to water in the late 1990´s. Revise.

Lines 104-105: why the 141 papers are not included in Figure 1?

Line 117: 3. Ant Colony Optimization--> I think the previous version where there was an introduction of the section is more adequate than the current one where that paragraph has moved to Workflow subsection.

Line 141: (????) longer shorter---> delete

Table 1: delete and incorporate as part of the text.

Figure 3: What do the asteriscs mean (*partially and fully constrained)? Not included in the figure. 

Line 173: CHANGE??---> delete

Tables 3-5: consider adding locations as done with Table 2.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

No changes have been made in the previous version and authors have considered to present the same paper.