Classification Schemes and Identification Methods for Urban Functional Zone: A Review of Recent Papers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors present a review related to urban functional zone identification. In this context, they describe the classification schemes, basic units, and methods applied to identify urban functional zones. Moreover, the authors present several conclusions where highlight some future trends based on the performed review.

Urban functional zone identification is an interesting research topic. In this sense, the submitted paper could be a valuable contribution. However, in my opinion, as it is currently presented, the article is not ready for journal publication. The following are my major points of criticism:

- From a general perspective, the article needs an in-deep reorganization to provide a better order. The current order entails that the article is not easy to read it. As an example, the classification schemes are presented before the methodological aspect of the review.

- The introduction section lacks the objective of this work. Why is it relevant to review works related to urban functional zones? Which is the contribution of this review?

- It is not clear if Section 2 results from the performed review or is a background. The authors have to clarify it. Moreover, if this classification results from the review, the authors have to reorganize the order of the article sections.

In addition, several references of this section are related to China Construction Industry. In this sense, the authors provide a classification schema with a unique viewpoint. The authors have to present a generalized perspective of classification schemas for urban functional zones.

Table 1 has no title.

 

- The authors need to add some references in Section 3 to consolidate the assertion related to the basic units of urban functional zone identification.

With respect to methodological issues, why did the authors only use “urban functional” in Web of Science? And why was the keyword different in the CNKI database? Why did the authors not use other international databases/repositories, for instance, Scopus?

The authors only search in title and body text in the case of Web of Science. However, it is a common practice to look for articles using titles, abstracts, and keywords. In this sense, the authors have to perform their searches again to avoid losing relevant articles.

Which were the selection criteria considered to reduce the initial number of collected articles? Where is the list of articles available? Which is the temporal dimension of the accumulated contributions?

Figure 3 is not relevant since it is described in the text. The authors should delete it.

As a general comment, more details about the applied methodology in this review are required.

 

- Section 3.2. Remote sensing is a relevant data source, and it is used in multiple approaches. However, there are no details about the characteristics of these resources. Is there any combination of data sources in the collected contributions? More information about the characteristics of data sources is needed.

Figure 4 is not relevant. The authors should delete it.

The authors provide a partial view of the word cloud and, therefore, in the statistical analysis. They only considered CNKI to generate the word cloud and perform the mentioned analysis.

 

- Section 4. The authors have to present the relation between proposed categories and applied methods. Furthermore, it is necessary to show the connection between methods and data sources.

Figure 6 is not relevant. The authors should delete it.

The authors have to improve the structure of Section 4. For instance, several works use K-means, but they are not grouped in Section 4.3. In this sense, the subsections of Section 4 are not easy to read. In addition, Section 4.3 seems a heterogeneous group of contributions, whereas Section 4.4 is very concrete.

Sections 4.4 and 4.5 have the same title.

The authors have to add and describe some additional characteristics thoroughly in this review, such as algorithms, time-consuming, acquisition costs, used tools, etc.

 

- A discussion section is needed in this type of paper where the authors should include open challenges, results of this review, limitations of existing approaches, limitations of the review, etc.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled “Classification Schemes and Identification Methods for Urban  Functional Zone: A Review” presents a study on literature findings related to the identification of urban functional zone.

 

There are several important findings of the study regarding the basics of classification schemes, the most common units and statistical approach in the identification of urban functional zone.

 

General comments:

• I cannot find the link between the tables and the text. There is no citation of the tables in the text.
• The caption of the Table 1 is not correct. Please add the proper one.
• The vertical and horizontal axes in Figure 3 should be described.
• The conclusions should be more concise and refer to the most important findings of performed study. Some of the statements should be added to the “Discussion”.
• What are the limitations of performed study?
• What is the novelty in performed study?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting but needs correction

The authors set themselves an ambitious scholarly task.  The title of the article indicated a broad literature review. 

The review included only literature located in the databases in the Web of Science (WOS) (http://isiknowledge.com) and the CNKI (http://www.cnki.net. Articles in two languages were selected for analysis. This should be made clear in the abstract. 
In the appendix to the article, the authors should provide a list of analyzed papers before and after manually checking the results. It is worth discussing more extensively in which years the papers were published. 

I do not understand why different search parameters were entered for English and Chinese TI = Urban Functional or TI = urban functional zone. It is worth noting that the search parameter included the title (TI) and not the subject term (SU)
It was not explained whether the manual checking of the results was based on. 

Citation of items [1] should be replaced by scientific literature.  
Authors should not cite the master's theses of authors [63] Yang, S. [64] Dou, Z.,[85] Yu, X. , as there is a wide range of research articles on this topic. 

I do not understand why only CNKI was used in Figure 5?
Figure 6 - no source given

I suggest modifying part of the title: a review of recent English- and Chinese-language papers 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have improved their manuscript significantly. The content is now much better organized than before and also is more clear for the readers. I recommend this work for further processing.

All the best!

Reviewer 3 Report

Thanks for the answers. This version is good and suitable for publication.

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.