Geospatial Analysis in Web Browsers—Comparison Study on WebGIS Process-Based Applications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between WebGIS, cloud computing, service-oriented architecture, and spatial data processing. However there are few comments that need to be consider before the article can be consider for publication. Following are the incorporating requested points:

- Overall, the writing of this article is well-organized and effectively presents the concepts and research findings. The authors demonstrate a clear understanding of the subject matter and provide a valuable contribution to the field of WebGIS.

- The study's results presented in the article are quite promising and offer potential avenues for further exploration by other researchers in the same field. However, the article acknowledges that certain experiments, such as the Heatmap analysis, did not yield the desired results. Nonetheless, this provides an opportunity for future improvements and advancements in the field, which could be discussed in more detail.

- To improve the quality of the article, it is recommended to include a section before the method section that explicitly explains the main contribution of the study. Currently, it may appear as though the article is primarily focused on comparing existing WebGIS functionalities, while the overall contribution is not thoroughly explored. This section could clarify what improvements can be achieved based on the study's results.

- Similarly, the conclusion of the article could be enhanced by explicitly stating the main contribution achieved through this study. By summarizing the key findings and their implications, readers will gain a better understanding of the significance of the research and its potential impact on the field of WebGIS.

- Additionally, it is suggested to include quantitative results obtained during the case study in the study abstract. By incorporating quantitative aspects,  the abstract can provide a more comprehensive overview of the study's outcomes and its practical implications.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your feedback.  We tried to process your comments. Whole manuscript has been revised totally.  Specifically: we changed a structure; better defined aims and clarified contribution; we extended a conclusion chapter.

Regarding the your comment to quantitative results - according to our opinion, most of quantitive results without context (=without longer text) are not suitable for abstract. Therefore we summary it by one sentence the abstract only. We added fundamental fundings into conclusion chapter. 

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

The manuscript presents a study that compares five geospatial webgis. The paper content is very useful and interesting.

The abstract should be reformulated. It misses a sentence introducing the theme, explaining the problem and then the objectives. In the end a conclusion sentence should be added.

The introduction section is poor. You should present an introduction to the theme, then the problem, the update situation providing examples of webgis already developed, and then finally your objectives.

In figure 1, see that some text are cut. Improve the quality of the figure.

Table 1 must be cited before in the text.

Section 2 do not seem like methods, but introduction. I suggest to change the structure of the paper, moving the content of setcion2 to introduction section.

I tested the webgis and it is working effectively.

Cite table 2 in the text.

Improve the quality of the figures.

More comments in pdf attached.

The manuscript requires a major revision.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Tha paper requires an English revision.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate specific comments in the PDF document; thank you for that. We tried to process all of your comments.

The whole manuscript has been revised totally. Specifically: the abstract was revised; we changed the structure; we defined aims better and clarified contribution; we extended both the introduction and conclusion chapter; all images and figures are correctly cited. All your comments from the PDF file (except the misunderstanding about Figure 1 - see below) have been incorporated.

Ad "In Figure 1, see that some text is cut. Improve the figure quality." - there is nothing cut in the manuscript (DOCX version), which we uploaded into the MDPI system; the image is complete.

Reviewer 3 Report

I was tempted to recommend rejection but it will be a pity because the topic of the paper is necessary and it has potential. The authors need to know that if the paper is not considerably reviewed and improved I'll recommend rejection in the next review.

General observations

* The paper completely ignores raster analytics without justifying it. I'm not saying it has to include it but abtract and intro should clearly say that.

* The are several repetitions on the papers that need to be removed.

* The structure of the paper is wrong. The paper is about comparison of approaches: Methodology should explain the method to do the comparison, results should present the analytical results. Intro should talk about raster/vector and client based and server based as well as defining service oriented architecture, resource oriented architecture and APIs. GeOnline should be part of the methodology. Also including the concept of processing by times. It this is not corrected I'll be forced to reject the paper in the next review. In summary, most of the content needs to be resorted.

* There are some clear mistakes or sentences that are not justified and are questionable. See details later.

* This is a review paper and the number of citations is very limited.

* The analysis does not go to consider the reasons of the results.

* The conclusions do not make detect gaps any do not recommendations on new research lines.

* The paper mixes and confuses client side processing, server side processing and cloud processing.

* OGC documents should be correctly cited.

Details

Line 9: WebGIS concept contradictory definitions (see line 56)

Line 25: Enumerate the new technologies (e.g. html5, canvas etc…)

Line 32: Grammar: To separated sentences separated by ",". Use ";" or ".".

Line 33: Grammar: "analyses" is a verb. Please use "analysis".

Line 34: replace "standard" by "common practices".

Line 37: What is a GIS instrument? I do not know what it is in this context.

Line 40: "Features", Can you use another word. In GIS "features" means "vector data".

Line 41: Possible mistake. "web based". I believe you mean "desktop based".

Line 71: Grammar: To separated sentences separated by ",". Use ";" or ".".

Line 88: expand "GIT"

Line 91: Sentence contradicting line 78. Clarify

Line 94: "in the same way" compared to what?

Line 95: WebGIS is not the "web as a platform". What is this?

Line 112 "data space" is a new concept (http://dataspaces.info/common-european-data-spaces/). Please do not use in general sense here.

Line 162 Grammar: sentence with no end.

Line 166 "expression means". I'm not familiar with the concept. I'm the only one?

Line 167 Wrong. An image is a portrayal of data.

Line 172: "supported by all GIS". Wrong (it is not possible that you are sure). Use "most" instead of "all".

Table 1 seems old mentioning standards that are not used any more such as WRT and WTS. WCS and SOS are excluded and some others)

Table 1: wrong "SE" is not a service, it is an encoding.

Line 208: I believe this is not accurate. GetCapabilities does not say anything about "point, line…"

Line 213: repetition of 201

Line 214: repetition of 202

Line 217: repetition of 195

Line 238: How can you be sure that there is ONLY "one".

Line 248: This distinction should be in the intro

Line 252: " faster and more ergonomic than the WPS service" this sentence is publicity and makes no sense for me.

Line 255: <head> of where? A web page?.

Line 258: recursive definition: a buffer calculates a buffer…

Line 298: Grammar: Caltulate --> Calculate

Line 306: Add "squered" in km.

Line 308 -324: trivial explanations. This is a sci. paper, not a manual.

Line 342 - 346: this is irrelevant. Remove

Line 268 – 270: confusing. It gives the impressions that GoOnline is a comparison tool and it is not.

Line 271 – 370: confusing. It gives the impressions that GoOnline is a comparison tool and it is not.

Line 360: suddenly APIs are mentioned but PyWPS is not an API. It is a web service.

Line 366: avoid the use of "false". Use a les "agressive" word

Line 386: "hexbin"? I'm the only one that does not know what is it?

Table 2 is too simplistic. Remove.

Line 414: REST API mentioned with no intro to the topic in the intro.

Line 407: Why a table. All other cases are not presented as table.

Line 454: Now GeONLINE is capitalized differently. Please use always the same capitalization.

Line 474; No clear if the data is processed in the client side or the server side in the other tools that are not GeOnline

Line 478: Wrong: "WPS communicates using GML". WPS communicates with XML. GML can be used for feature based data but it is not mandatory.

Line 480-484: repetition

Line 485-488: I understand what you are trying to say but the whole paragraph is extremely general and ends up saying nothing. Can you provide some examples or define preprocessing?

Line 492: "The aim was to identify the performance limits of Geonline". This is not the aim of the paper. GeoOnline is tool done to calibrate performance. Calibrate performance is the aim.

Line 496-497: Circular sentence. "a popular browser is used because it is popular". Refrase. A better justification:  Chromium is an engine used in several map browsers so use Chrome is like using edge and others too.

Line 519: Complexity of a buffer operations depends on the distance parameter. No info about it until table 7. Needs to be said upfront.

Line 563: " robustness"? I do not think this is a justification. If it is fast, is because the algoritzm has been optimized or something similar. Robustness is another thing.

Line 567: The author fails to see the relevance of processing by tiles: parallel processing etc.

Line 585: Almost no conclusions. Elaborate more.

Line 585: Author mixes cloud processing with Turf

Line 664: A paper that is supposed to make a review on processing in the web cannot have only 29 citations some of them simple and general web pages. Remove general URLs and provide concrete references to focused urls instead.

See my previous list of comments.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate specific comments in the document; thank you for that. We tried to process all of your comments.

The whole manuscript has been revised totally. Specifically: the abstract was revised; we changed the structure; we defined aims better and clarified contribution; we extended both the introduction and conclusion chapter; repetitions were removed; we increased the number of references (from 29 to 53)

Almost all of your comments (except two, see below) from the file have been incorporated.

Regarding the structure of the manuscript - Although we received two contradictory reviews (Reviewer #1 = article is well-organized and effectively presents the concepts and research findings, and you, as Reviewer #3 = The structure of the paper is wrong), we revised the content and structure. We tried to find a balance between following your comments and not missing the context of our study.

• Ad "* The paper mixes and confuses client-side processing, server-side processing, and cloud processing." - we clarified this better.
• Ad "Table 2 is too simplistic. Remove" - based on the discussion with other authors. We decided not to remove a table. We considered it as important for the context of the manuscript. 
• Ad "The author fails to see the relevance of processing by tiles: parallel processing etc." - we do not understand to meaning of this comment. We are not focused on tiles at all.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

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