Architectural Simulations on Spatio-Temporal Changes of Settlement Outdoor Thermal Environment in Guanzhong Area, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the very demanding, beneficial and great work. I recommend publishing the article with minor corrections that are of a formal nature and do not reduce the value of the research results and their interpretation.

Comments for authors:

1/ Line 138: Add unit km² in the text...“In particular, the building area has increased from 0.13 of 2003 to 0.17 of 2018;...“

2/ Figure 4 – mark in picture: a) on the left, b) on the right

3/ Table 2 – I suggest a small adjustment

• In the first line: Distance between 2 trees (m)
• in the second line "Platanus" ... only value, no units

4/ Table 3 – I suggest a separate column for units, or all units should be listed the same form (in parentheses)

Example:

Wind direction at 10 m (°)

Relative humidity at 2m (%)

5/ Table 4 – How do authors recommend resolve thresholds? (example for PET for subtropical region...if the value PET =14, PET=18, PET = 22,...)

6/ Fig. 5 – Would it be possible to use the same scale for "Temperature" values in all 4 images? (as well as relative humidity)

7/ Table 5 – Is table name correct?

8/ Table 5 – I recommend adding the column names with the values RMSE, MAPE, as well as in the second column

9/ Figure 6 – I propose to add a), b), c), d) to the pictures

- Is it possible to show the same scale for temperature (a, b)? - also for relative humidity (c, d)

10/ Fig. 8 – I recommend adding a unit for PET

11/ Fig. 9 – I recommend specifying: Difference distribution maps of Air Temperature (AT) and Relative Humidity (RH) at 1.5m of the ground at both day-time (at 12:00) and night-time (at 23:00).

13/ line 357 – I suggest using the same designation for "N-S road" in the text, and "S - N road" in Figure 10

14/ Figure 11 – add a unit for PET

15/ line 411, 412,... I suggest adding units

16/ Table 11 – unit for Albedo

17/ Complete the data to article no. [68] in References

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Reviewer 2 Report

REVIEW COMMENTS TO AUTHORS:

The article " Research on the Spatio-temporal Changes of Settlement Outdoor Thermal Environment in Guanzhong Area Based on 3-D Architectural Simulation " this paper aimed to provide data support for rural sustainable development through analyzing the Spatio-temporal characteristics interaction of the outdoor thermal environment.

1. The abstract section must be enriched with significant results of this study with numerical values.
2. The authors are encouraged to use the latest literature in the introduction section not older than 2016.
3. The authors have presented many figures for the results; however, the essence of each graph and their significant depiction is missing. It must be included.
4. The quality of images is poor and must be enriched and in the figures uniform font size and font type must be maintained.
5. The conclusion section must indicate significant findings with respect to the objectives of the study mentioned at the end of the introduction. The future scope of this work must be stated.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors presented a case study to show the changes in outdoor thermal comfort comparing three different time range. It is an interesting study but the structure and also the presentation of the study is weak. This is also because of the unsatisfactory use of technical English. 

Furthermore, here I listed some comments to help improving the text. 

1. The aim of the study is not stated clearly. The authors selected four sites but no explanations were given why these sites were selected. Last paragraph of the introduction was not connected with the previous one.
2. In the figures, titles were not included the definitions of a, b, c and sub-figure captions were not given. This makes hard to understand the text along with the figures. 
3. In the text, some units are missing such as "building area" at line 138.
4. Table 1 is missing.
5. Nomenclature is missing. No explanation of the parameters in the equations were given.
6. No references for equations were given.
7. What are the upper limits for RMSE ve MAPE? Please give references. 
8. In Fig. 9, which sub-figures are "with trees", which ones are "without trees"?
9. Figure 10 is not mentioned in the text.
10. Section 4.1. includes information from the literature. Since this is discussion section, lines 378-430 and 467-481 should be moved to the Introduction section. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This is an interesting article, dealing with important subject. Authors did a really good job - the overall structure is correct, methods and results are clearly presented. I am missing one thing - discussion with other research results in a similar field.

But in general, this article can be published as it is. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed all the comments satisfactorily and this paper can be accepted

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestion. In the future study and research, I will work harder and strive for more results. Also, I combed my article and corrected some English mistakes.

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate the responses to the comments. The manuscript now is satisfactory but still needs a thorough language check.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and for your comments on my article; I have comprehensively sorted out the content of the article and corrected English grammar and spelling errors with the help of English professors， which is of great significance to my paper, the details of my modification are as follows:

Line 75: “indicates” was revised to “indicated”, and “A” was revised to “a”,

Line 92: “reaches” was revised to “reached”,

Line 99: “first” was revised to “Firstly”,

Line 136: “On-site” was revised to “on-site”,

Line 150: “buildings” was deleted,

Line 159: (FAR) was added after the number,

Line 160: “local” was deleted,

Line 171: “m2” was revised to “m²”,

Line 176: “Moreover” was revised to “Furthermore”,

Line 178-183: re-edited the full sentence,

Line 216-217: the grammer of English language was revised,

Line 337: “to” was revised to “in order to”,

Line 379: “at” was revised to “of”,

Line 394: “PET” was revised to “average PET”,

Line 402: “settlements” was revised to “settlement”,

Line 404: “are” was revised to “is”,

Line 412-413: “air temperature” was revised to “AT”, “relative humidity” was revised to “RH”

Line 481: “revealed” was revised to “reveals”,

Line 508: “conditions” was revised to “condition”,

Line 509: “thr” was revised to “the”,

Line 527: “was” was revised to “were”,

Line 547: “local” was revised to “Local”,

Thank you so much again