Microclimate Optimization of School Campus Landscape Based on Comfort Assessment^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General Comments

 

This paper proposed a methodology for superimposing the microclimate model to obtain the optimal comfort solution.

This paper and design of experiment are not well organized and cleared. In Introduction, the author didn’t explain the excellence of research rather than previous studies. In Materials and Methods, The author did not mention design variables and dependent variables in detail. In results, the results were very simply so, there is a lack of insight to reader. This study seems to be a case study. For these reasons, before publishing this paper, most the parts should be revised. Please refer to the detailed comments below.

 

Technical Comments

 

1.      Abstract is not well organized, so The reviewer recommends that follow that pattern [background] -> [objective] -> [methodology] -> [results] -> [contribution]

 

2.      In Introduction, the literature review was a lack of contents. The reviewer recommends that the author needs to add the literature review to prove the research excellence rather than previous researches. And the review should address not only human comfort but also other relevant industry. Attributes and limitations in application should be explicitly addressed.

 

3.      In Introduction, the author explained the ‘human comfort’. Is it different from ‘thermal comfort’?

 

4.      In project overview, The author selected the middle school to optimize the human comfort. Why the author selected the middle school?. Why is it a middle school rather than an elementary school or high school? And also, related to the outdoor thermal comfort with tree or wind, the city or residential building is the most important issue.

 

5.      In Table 1, the author explained the types of student activities. Does the author considered the types of student activities to calculate the human comfort? Why was table presented?

 

6.      In section 4, the author conducted the optimization using simulation model. The reviewer recommends the author insert table about design variable and dependent variable to enhance the understanding to the future readers.

 

7.      In result, according to the research results, it seems that the author consider wind environment as a human comfort. But wind environment and light environment are one of the variables to calculate the thermal comfort. It is not a human comfort. The ECOTECH can calculate the thermal comfort. The author must optimize the thermal comfort as a dependent variable considering wind and light environments according to allocation of trees.

 

8.      In Discussion, The research contribution should be clearly stated and more elaboration on the practical and theoretical implications of the findings from this study should be provided.

 

9.      In references, the author referred the research paper in Chinese. However, After publishing the paper, maybe the future readers cannot read Chinese and the reviewer wanted to check the references, but couldn't find it on the internet. So the references are unreliable. Therefore, the reviewer recommends, the author changes the reference in high level English papers such as SCI, SSCI, or SCOPUS.

Author Response

Please find in the attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript suffers from a lack of clarity. Many of the methods used and simulation parameters are not explained well so it is difficult to pass judgement on the overall quality of the analyses. Many of the captions for the figures were either missing or were too vague. Others could use some color bars. Overall, this paper will require extensive revisions before it will be ready to be published.

Below are my specific comments.

 

Lines 122-124. I am not sure what you are trying to say here. By “obvious” do mean “distinct”?

 

You should add a caption to Figure 1 that states that this is a schematic of flow regions for an idealized group of buildings. Otherwise, the reader must hunt through the text of the manuscript to understand this. Also, it seems a little confusing to discuss the “shade of the wind area”. I understand how the basic concept is similar to the shade of light, but you discuss both the wind and light within the campus of the school. I would recommend referring to “shelter” when discussing wind instead of “shade” to make sure that your meaning is clear.

 

While the plot in Figure 3 is visually impressive at first glance, I find it makes it difficult to compare the behavior at the various stations with each other. I think a simple line plot with all the time series with different colors or markers would be better. This style of plot requires the user to employ a ruler to determine the actual speed at any specific location and time.

 

Can you add color bars and a more descriptive caption to Figure 7? Are these averaged over a particular day or the entire experimental period? It would also be helpful to label each of the buildings since you refer to them by number quite often and it takes a while for the user to get familiar with the labels of the buildings and forces them to refer back to figure 2 a lot.

 

Again, you need to be more descriptive in the captions of the figures. Figures should be able to stand on their own. You mention that Figure 8 combines the wind and light simulation but does not indicate a color bar so the user can interpret the contour colors in the figure at a glance. It would also be helpful to include a reference vector to assist in interpreting the vector fields. What do the contour lines in the two plots on the bottom of Figure 8 indicate?

 

Are the trees in the simulations treated as being porous or solid? If they are porous, how are you modelling that? If not, this would represent a significant over prediction of the effects of the trees.

 

How many total simulations were performed? Did you produce a wind rose from historical data and weight the results in the averages by the frequency that the wind direction and speed occur? Or did you just pick a few representative scenarios and simulate those? I would think that it would be necessary to use the former to “optimize” the results. If the latter method was used, how did you select the scenarios.

 

You seem to have several incomplete sentences on lines 363-367.

 

You misspelled “two” in the legend of Figure 11.

 

What do you mean by “disadvantaged” in the caption of Figure 13? Is that just a region with a low level of comfort? It is unclear how activities are incorporated in your analyses shown in Figures 15 and 16. Are the people performing activities affecting the comfort level or does the comfort level determine the activities that can be done in that location?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The study presents an assessment of microclimate and outdoor comfort conditions at a school campus using computational tools, on site monitoring and observations, for proposing design improvement scenarios through landscape and vegetation layout. The research is of high interest for designers and urban planners and presents useful results for outdoor space design optimization. It is one of the few microclimate studies which explore outdoor space improvement in cold winter conditions. The paper is adequately referenced however some more documentation on the microclimate and outdoor comfort parameters examined as well as on the computational tools used could be useful. The presentation of the study could improve with more detailed explanations of figures in the figure legends, and with better organization of the information in the text, especially on methodological parts.  

Regarding methodology, the study takes into account the simultaneous effects of multiple parameters (microclimate parameters, activity, urban and landscape layout) by superimposing data for achieving comfort evaluation and sufficiently combines computational tools, monitored data and observations. However there is need for more information and explanations on the methods used (software tools, data collection, analysis methods). A description of the method for evaluating comfort is missing. There could be either an assessment based on outdoor comfort indices such as PET, UTCI etc, or at least a definition of threshold values of wind speed and solar radiation to distinguish comfortable and uncomfortable conditions for the specific activities. Alternatively, the comfort evaluation method based on “number of activities”, presented in section 5.2, should be described, explained and documented in more detail.  The CFD software used for airflow simulations is only mentioned in the conclusions, more information should be given in methodology section.

 

Some more detailed comments are noted below :

Lines 2-4. Please consider revising the title e.g. Microclimate Optimization of School Campus Landscape Based on Comfort Assessment — a case study at Tangfang Middle School in Xuzhou City, China

Line 110. In section 2.1 please add some maps to indicate the global location, the site location and the urban layout.

Line 142: Please add a legend for figure 1.

Line 146: please add units to temperature data

Line 147: please add units to wind speed data

Line 157. In figure 2, please distinguish test point indications from building indications so that they are not both indicated with the same numbers, e.g. consider using letters for the test points (e.g. ww for windward, co for corner flow, cr for cross flow, ed for eddy and sh for shade area). Please also increase the font size of the measurement points indications.

Line 179. In section 3.2 please add information on the CFD software which is used for the study.

Lines 243 and 245. Please increase the size of the images in figures 5 and 6.

Lines 247-250. Please rephrase and explain “ … the No.5 teaching building as the main experimental object is in the whole campus wind environment where the maximum wind speed and turbulence phenomenon are serious.”

Lines 250-251. “ It is a relatively bad location in the whole campus wind environment…” Please rephrase “bad location” and describe in more detail the negative parameters in the specific location.

Lines 251-253. “…we cut in from the flow field around the No.5 teaching building and obtained 3 areas with high wind speed.” Please rephrase and explain in more detail the analysis method. Consider indicating the process and/or the specific images of the results.

Line 275. Section 3.3 does not seem to refer to the wind environment data simulation. Please correct the section title.

Line 304. Please increase the images of figure 7 or at least increase the color scale indication so that it can be legible.

Line 321. Please add in the legend, more information on the data shown in each image of figure 8 (e.g. a, b, c and d)

Line 324. “…the area between No.4 and No.5 buildings has the lowest sunlight value in the whole campus area”. Please indicate the value.

Lines 357-398. In section 4.2 the optimization analysis takes into account only the reduction of wind speed due to added vegetation. However, the reduction of solar radiation due to additional trees could also affect comfort conditions and should probably be considered as well. In case the areas where trees are added, are considered already overshaded by the adjacent buildings and the trees do not further reduce solar radiation, it should be clearly mentioned.  

Lines 466-467. “ … the wind prevention efficiency can be increased by 39.4% and can be reduced to 1.43m/s”.  Please correct the phrase.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author may be addressed some comments.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The modifications to the paper have definitely improved it. However, I am confused about the references to points 1-7 in figures 13 and 15. Where are these points located? Are they related to the points identified in figure 3? I only see 5 points identified in figure 3 and they aren't labeled 1-5. The reader has to go back to the description in the text describing figure 3 and then assume the abbreviation that you used in the figure to associate the point number with the physical location of the point. Where are points 6 and 7? If points are not associated with those that are identified in figure 3, then where are they located?

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been significanlty improved, thank you for your effort. 

Author Response

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