Framing VRRSability Relationships among Vulnerability, Risk, Resilience, and Sustainability for Improving Geo-Information Evaluations within Geodesign Decision Support
, Keith M. Reynolds 3, Steven D. Prager 4, Philip J. Murphy 5 and Wenwen Li 6
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis manuscript considers vulnerability, risk, resilience, and sustainability (V-R-R-S) in improving geoinformation decision evaluation in the context of urban land-water systems. However, it strives to explore the relationships among the V-R-R-S concepts in the context of “a VRRSability conceptual framework.” Below are my impressions of this manuscript regarding relevance, structure, content and language.
Abstract: I find the abstract well written as it summarises the manuscript’s content, ensuring that readers grasp the orientation of the subject, its relevance and actual research.
Introduction and review: the manuscript is a review piece. It introduces the concept of decision evaluation, its trade-offs in the frame of objectives, the V-R-R-S and its operationalisation (VRRSability). The review used geospatial ontology for decision evaluation and analysed the VRRSability components as measurable variables. The argumentations are balanced as they examine the pros and cons (limitations). Then, it argued towards VRRSability conceptual framework for synthesising perspectives on vulnerability, risk, resilience, and sustainability about human-environment, social-ecological, and natural-human systems. It further discusses performance issues. In summary, the authors moved Nyerges et al.’s (2021) “Synthesizing Vulnerability, Risk, Resilience and Sustainability into VRRSability for Improving Geoinformation Decision Support Evaluations” forward into a conceptual framework. In this regard, I consider the manuscript relevant and provide a direct knowledge contribution to VRRSability.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsClarify or provide brief definitions or references for specialized terms and concepts like MOESIR and VRRSability to enhance reader understanding.
Fill in all the editorial information placeholders with accurate details, including the academic editor's name and the publication dates.
It seems that the numbering of phrases or sections is inconsistent or incomplete (e.g., "1. Introduction 36" and "ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2023, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 33"). The numbering should be checked and adjusted for clarity.
There is some repetition of phrases, such as the mention of "Follow-on research" and "Decision support software development," which could be streamlined for conciseness.
The application of geodesign decision support for managing urban land-water systems (ULWS) and low impact development as part of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) adds practical context to the research. This contextualization helps readers connect theoretical concepts to real-world scenarios.
The explanation of duplication among columns, summarizing the commonality of components among V-R-R-S concepts, is clear. The implication that a core set of computations underlies VRRSability is well-stated.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe writing style is formal and technical, which is suitable for the academic context. The sentences are well-structured, contributing to the overall readability.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe review article is a good scientific contribution in which a systematic, updated evaluation technique has been portrayed, still some minor changes is suggested for possible publication.
Comment:
1. The relationship among the Vulnerability, Risk, Resilience, and Sustainability are established and the social-ecological support systems using artificial intelligence is properly discussed in the work, still the novelty needs to be clearly mentioned.
2. The objectives may be mentioned point wise in the concerned section.
3. The research question may be incorporated in the work.
4. The article is well written, but some section needs to be improved and needs some grammatical corrections.
5. The nature of data needs to complete the study must be mentioned.
6. Presently geospatial technology is widely used in kind of work. Therefore, some RS and GIS based maps with proper scale and legend should be incorporated and the software (Arc GIS, Edras Imagine, Q GIS, etc.) names also need to be mentioned in the concerned section for the improvement of the work.
7. The selection criteria of the VRRSability components may be explained to make it understandable to every reader and to improve the quality of the work and related literature must be highlighted.
8. The incorporation of SWOC (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Challenge) of present techniques analysis may improve the current study.
9. The authors need to be mentioned some recommendations based on the current work.
10. There is a scope to improve the presentation structure, like highlighting thrust area.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNA.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors elaborate relationships among vulnerability, risk, resilience, and sustainability and argue VRRSability as an overarching concept in geodesign decision support in urban land water system. A comprehensive literature review is given.
This is interesting about how to break down decision support systems into factors and indicators and present and evaluate their relationships.
Generally, I would suggest the authors reduce text about the structure of this paper and literature review. It is more like a chapter other than a paper. An appendix would be good to accommodate background and literature summary (relevant tables can be further expanded even). It would be great if the authors present a concise description and major points that readers can take back from this work.
Secondly, how to generalize the VRRability in ULWS for GSI to other geodesign decision systems?
Please find other concerns below:
1. What are the major points in figure 3 covering scenarios from global scale to local scale. And specifically to GSI, it is not clear how to evaluation geoinformation from global scale to local scale, as in figure 7.
2. Combinations of the four components are illustrated using Venn diagram. The authors pointed out the limitations. How about just put possible combinations into a matrix directly?
3. Some are not explained in detail and confusing, for example a1 to b2 and others in the columns of Risk and Resilience in table 1 are same. And what are the relation between figure 1 and 2?
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNo.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper is an extension to the article titled Synthesizing Vulnerability, Risk, Resilience, and Sustainability into VRRSability for Improving Geoinformation Decision Support Evaluations published in IJGI in 2021. Despite the subtle similarity between the submitted paper and the published one, the latter still has merits to be presented in an independent scientific document. Based on the below comments and concerns, the reviewer proposes Major Revision at this stage. This way, the content can be re-evaluated to check whether the concerns have been addressed.
1) The reviewer believes some parts of the paper are over-described and require rearrangement. For instance, Section 1 is not straightforward and does not display the existing literature and the paper’s contributions. Another example is lines 106-136, which are hard to understand for readers and interrupt the reading flow.
2) Various concepts are presented in the paper. However, they are not systematically connected and organized. This matter overshadows the paper's significance because instead of focusing readers' minds on deep materials, it faces them with notions scattered throughout the text.
3) In many parts, it is indicated that box-relation and Venn diagrams are eligible and helpful tools for classification and bringing complex notions into order. However, the reviewer thinks that concentrating on such explanations in the text does not considerably assist the authors in fulfilling the research objectives. In other words, the paper’s innovation is not rooted in using such tools. Its contributions spring from identifying meaningful concepts in framing VRRSability and how they relate to each other. Therefore, the reviewer recommends revision of the entire text to shift the paper’s focal point from tools to notions.
4) It is ambiguous and unjustified how Table 1, which plays a substantial role in the entire text, is obtained. In other words, how have these components been extracted? How have these items been put together?
5) What is missing in the paper is validation. It is unclear how the models and structures introduced in the text are validated and verified. These two require to be scientifically tackled in the revised version. Table 2 is an example of this concern. Explanations given in Table 2 are limited to the judgments, but it is vague how the judgments have been made.
6) Some problems can be found in the text. In line 301, it is indicated that “A literature review identified seven conventions …” but it cannot be tracked which literature was exactly reviewed (was it the last column of Table 2?).
7) Referencing does not follow the journal’s format (please see line 359 The Turner et al (57)).
8) Text is heterogeneous. For example, in line 359, we have The Turner et al. (57), but in line 576, it is Turner et al. [57].
Comments on the Quality of English Language-
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have addressed the reviewer's concerns, and the paper has been revised significantly. Therefore, the manuscript is ready for publication at this stage.
