Monitoring the Impact of the Large Building Investments on the Neighborhood

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Respected Author

First, I have a general comment:   Applied Sciences is a journal that promotes the applications of research to the industry. Papers, despite of scientific methodology merit, should present some case studies from the real world and preferably some recommendations for practice. Presented study briefly fulfils this requirement and provides valuable information for the readers. A synthetic presentation of gathered experiences should however be presented in the Conclusions. This element is missing but I have an impression that you could easily juxtapose presented information in one table with some recommendation for "good practices" in monitoring of structures adjacent to construction works.

Presented methods are relatively simple and not really innovative. However, their presentation on case studies is informative (mainly of local importance - please provide some local background of mining region) and brings some added value for the discipline and for the readers. 

I marked major revision just because I have a lot of comments and mainly editorial issues to be resolved. It is not even a problem of the research itself but rather of incautious way of presentation. The list of my comments and concerns is given below.

1. Concerning Figure 1 - It shows Katowice in the contour of Poland. That is not really informative. As a mining engineer I'd appreciate some information about localization of test site with regard to active zones of deep black coal mining activities. Just a small map of the region named 1b, next to existing 1a.
2. Figure 3b needs more precise description and/or referring to a particular code. Most of known (to me) vibration monitoring systems refer to vibration velocity. Is acceleration really an analysed value in Polish codes? Please clarify.
3. line 211. What is the purpose to introduce Fig. 6 before Fig. 4.  Sentence looks a little bit irrelevant to geological profile.
4. Format of table 1 should be customized to MDPI templates.
5. Figures 7-10 are not really informative and should probably have better resolution. I'd appreciate a supplementary map with a list of neighbouring objects under study (similarly to Fig. 16 in the second case study).
6. I'd appreciate some discussion of presented results in the light of former studies (references presented in the introductory part). Section Discussion seems to be just a set of subjective Author's comments.
7. Some comments concerning methodology of displacement (settlement) and vibration monitoring, with regard to equipment, frequency and required accuracy would be appreciated. 
8. Conclusions following Discussion seem to be trivial. I'd appreciate some more recommendation for application of various monitoring systems according to Author's experience. Such recommendation might be focused on specific Mining Area (Upper Silesia) and/or provided for a wider application worldwide.
9. The list of references should be cautiously checked. I noticed that reference [11] is from Technical Transactions. Environment Engineering. (not: Technical Transcriptions, series Enviroment).
10. Four papers are written in Polish and are not available for international Readers, but, according to title translation, seem to be relevant.
11. Reference [27] (in Polish) could, however, be replaced by another work of Zaczek-Peplinska that I found in Scopus, which is newer, and seems to be much more relevant, and is written in English (Multi-temporal survey of diaphragm wall with terrestrial laser scanning method, Zaczek-Peplinska, J., Kowalska, M.E., Łapiński, Sł., Grzyb, M., Open Geosciences, 2020, 12(1), pp. 656–667).
12. Format of the references should be corrected (year - bold, volume number - italic)
13. Please provide source of Figure 17. Buildings of the housing estate “Oak Terraces” in Katowice (project visualization).

The article is well written, it is not boring, presents examples (case studies) relevant to the subject and fit within a scope of Applied Sciences. But, according to my comments listed above, it needs many small editorial and methodological corrections to form a valuable "original research paper".

I am not native English speaker, but I have an impression that presented study might need some proof reading concerning English grammar and style.

Best regards

Author Response

Thank you very much for your insightful and friendly review. I tried to include all comments in the revised text. Below I am sending answers to the questions asked in the review:

• suggestion to supplement the conclusions and insert a table with “good practices” in the monitoring - supplemented in the corrected text of the article,
• Remark 1: Fig. 1b with a map of zones of active mining activity has been inserted,
• Remark 2: in Polish standards, the main analyzed quantity characterizing vibrations is acceleration - the information has been supplemented in the corrected text,
• Remark 3: in line 211 the reference to Fig. 6 was deleted (it was included there by mistake),
• Remark 4: the table format has been corrected,
• Remark 5: Unfortunately, I do not have photos with higher resolution (the described investments were carried out many years ago), the objects visible in Fig. 7-10 are on the map in Fig. 4,
• Remark 6: I supplemented the part on the discussion of the results,
• Remark 7: some information about the methodology and accuracy of the measurements was in lines 177-191, additionally the information supplemented in the discussion,
• Remark 8: the conclusions were supplemented, an additional table 2 was inserted,
• Remark 9: item [11] was corrected, the entire references was checked,
• Remark 10: in the current version of the article there are 3 items in Polish, which is less than 9% of all items, because the quoted authors do not have publications in English, I decided to leave these items in the references and citations,
• Remark 11: I changed position no. [27] in the reference,
• Remark 12: I changed the formatting of the reference,
• Remark 13: I completed the source of fig. 17,
• additionally, I subjected the text of the article to a professional linguistic correction.

In the revised text of the article, all comments received from the reviewer entered in the comments to the original text were taken into account (if possible by the author). As an attachment, I am sending the text with the marked amendments in the Word editor.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I read the paper which in principal is very interesting. These measurements should be performed with every risky structure.

If one designs well this type of measurements should be  performed always to minise damage.

So I recommend this for publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your efforts to review my article.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Respected Author

I appreciate your afforts to make your study more attractive for the Reader.

I have an impression that changes introduced in your manuscript will raise its citing potential. For now, it seems to be a well documented set of case studies with background presented in the introductory part and some recommendations juxtaposed in conclusions.

I recommend to publish this contribution. Some editorial work should be done, however, to check English grammar and style, composition of text breaking, and capital letters in fugures' captions. 

Best regards 

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

The manuscript “Monitoring the impact of the large construction investments on the neighbourhood” is rather well written and focuses on some monitoring results that are essential in construction sites. Regrettably, the manuscript has some serious flaws that make me reckon that it is not ready to be considered for publication in an international journal. Nevertheless, I think that the Author should be encouraged to submit a significantly improved version in which the aspects specified below are sufficiently developed.

The proposed results and discussion do not seem very original or worth of scientific interest. This is because the data come from rather standard geotechnical in situ measurements (pore water pressures, displacements, accelerations), from the point of view of both the used sensors and the applied procedures, and no particular interpretation is provided other than qualitatively commenting the data. The quantity of the presented data is not impressive as well, although the long duration of monitoring might be a point of interest. The comparison with construction phases is almost missing, the description of the soil in the construction sites, i.e. geological and geotechnical subsoil characterization, is completely missing. About half of the figures is photos, but there is not even one showing the mentioned cracks attributed to construction, or figures helping to understand where and when they occurred.

An example of insufficiently described and discussed results is the piezometer data. Figure 4 shows 3 piezometers in the map. Figure 10 Shows the results of  7  piezometers instead. Where are they located? How deep are they? Is there a reason for the different time trends that were measured in them?

The intensity of the measured quantities is not adequately commented. How can one say, therefore, if their impact is notable, as asserted in the Discussion section, or not? What is the quantitative link between the monitored variations, the expected damage, and the real damage observed? All that should have been commented more quantitatively and in detail.

Furthermore, the discussion about what is new and original in these results, and how they could help improving the general knowledge on appropriate choices and procedures in the monitoring of a construction site, is weakly developed.

Other minor observations are provided as annotations in the attached pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

By presenting a couple of case studies, the article aims at demonstrating how the monitoring of impacts is particularly important in the context of the influence exerted by the investment project on the neighborhood of important geotechnical works.

Although the topic is interesting, it is nevertheless treated in rather general and qualitative terms, with references to well-known content in the literature. The article does not present any innovative elements and has no real scientific research content. The article merely reports two case studies, with some results from monitoring of settlements, building inclination and the piezometric height of a water table. These are standard practices, which, although not always sufficiently extensive and detailed due to costs, are nevertheless well known and widely used.

Specific comments:

1) English should be revised throughout the paper.

2) Introduction does not explain which is the main objective of the paper.

3) Correspondence between the time of construction works with the occurrence of settlements and deflection on objects is not highlighted in the figures.

4) The meaning of Figure 18 is not clear.

5) In order to understand the real effect of works on structures' deformation, besides Figures 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 and 18 a specific plan reporting the position of the instrumented points would be useful.

Further comments are reported in the attached annotated copy.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf