Advancing Resilience of Critical Health Infrastructures to Cascading Impacts of Water Supply Outages—Insights from a Systematic Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper stems from the authors’ observation that the concept of resilience in the reviewed state-of-the-art literature is still dominated by a technical perspective. The authors argue that the predominant view on health infrastructure resilience needs to be broadened including more holistic understanding of resilience, especially taking into account it’s social and ecological aspect. The paper presents a good coverage of the state-of-the-art literature from the field. It is interesting literature review and is well structured and written in good & rich English. However, before accepting final decision on relevance of the manuscript for publication in Infrastructures the following issues need to be addressed by the authors.

 

1. In the introductory (first) part of the paper a sharp criticism on the solely technical or engineering dimension of resilience noted in the reviewed literature is detected. However, in the second part, the authors upgrade it with only one additional dimension (i.e. organizational). According to relevant literature at least one or two additional dimensions of resilience exist – see, for example (Bruneau et al. 2003; http://dx.doi.org/10.1193/1.1623497) with four dimensions of resilience stated (TOSE: Technical, Organizational, Social, and Economic). According to very promising thesis of the paper (i.e. holistic and wide consideration of the notion resilience), after reading the whole paper the expectations of this reviewer are not completely achieved. Furthermore, in the study the authors’ focus is on the water supply failures (in healthcare facilities). A wider discussion on the resilience aspect(s) considered in relation to other systems and threats is missing. Oppositely, the title of the paper should be modified – i.e. the limitation on the water supply should be fairly stated.
2. Another reviewer’s general comment refers to the problem of cascading risks which is mentioned several times in the paper, but according to his opinion it is not dealt sufficiently. The authors should put additional effort on this issue and discuss cascading effects in a more comprehensive way.
3. The sentence in lines 131-133 refers to the authors’ study and thus, it should appear in the next paragraph. In its current position the connection between the previous text (paragraph in lines 120-131) is missing.
4. In ch. 2 (lines 145-154) five interesting research questions are quoted explicitly. However, the answers to all of them are not provided in the paper. Throughout the paper the authors should try to give clear and comprehensive answers to all five questions.
5. A reference to Fig. 1 is missing in the text (ch. 3). Please, add.
6. Inclusion and exclusion criteria in all steps of systematic literature review (ch. 3) should be more exactly described and encountered (line 172, 177, Fig. 1). Additionally, a reference for the applied software (MAXQDA) and its short presentation (methodology) is missing. Please, revise.
7. 1: correct spelling mistake in description of Step 7 (“publucations”).
8. 1^st paragraph of section 4.1: ref. [24] is mentioned 3 times. Its citation in line 222 is unnecessary. In general, (too much) favourization of ref. [24] is detected (lines 252, 257, section 4.2.1, etc.). Is the study performed by Dippenaar & Bezuidenhout indeed the only one that holistically highlights the resilience of healthcare facilities? Please, explain and provide argumentation.
9. Table 1: revise incorrect citations (numbers): Dippenaar & Bezuidenhout is [24] (not 23!), McDaniels et al. is [26] (not 25!), Vugrin et al. is [25] (not 24!), and Yusoff et al. is [39] (not 38!).
10. Line 277: delete unnecessary parenthesis.
11. A reference to Tab. 2 is missing in the text (ch. 4). Please, add.
12. Quotation of common technical components is missing in the current manuscript (e.g. line 452). Please, provide a list of concrete technical components for the function analysed (i.e. water supply), explicitly. It is important since it appears also in the proposed resilience definition (line 521) which present an essential contribution of the paper.
13. Line 680: check the spelling of 3^rd author surname.
14. Line 698: avoid using capital letters for the title of the book chapter.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Please find attached our reponse letter.

Kind regards,

Nathalie Sänger 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript addresses an interesting thematic line related to access to health services and problems with water supply, it can be accepted after minor corrections:

a) I suggest the authors insert a topic or table that describes and exemplifies some cases of problems in underdeveloped and developing countries, in addition to their impacts on the current pandemic;
b) Adjust Tab 2 to be inside a page, avoiding breaks;
c) Add a topic at the end about future perspectives of this research, highlighting the current pandemic post.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Please find attached our reponse letter.

Kind regards,

Nathalie Sänger 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors presented a critical topic on the resilience of infrastructure. The manuscript is well written and presented clearly. The reviewer has the following comments and clarification to further enrich the quality of the paper:

1. The authors need to change the title of the article to include healthcare infrastructure and water supply failures.
2. The reviewer suggests adding a paragraph on other types of structures and their health monitoring to create a wholesome review paper. 
3. Reviewer suggests that the following papers should be added to appropriate paragraphs

(a) Yusta, J. M., Correa, G. J., & Lacal-Arántegui, R. (2011). Methodologies and applications for critical infrastructure protection: State-of-the-art. Energy Policy, 39(10), 6100–6119.

(b) Sony, S., & Sadhu, A. (2020). Synchrosqueezing transform-based identification of time-varying structural systems using multi-sensor data. J. Sound Vib., 486, 115576.

(c) Liu, W., & Song, Z. (2020). Review of studies on the resilience of urban critical infrastructure networks. Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., 193, 106617.

(d) Quitana, G., Molinos-Senante, M., & Chamorro, A. (2020). The resilience of critical infrastructure to natural hazards: A review focused on drinking water systems. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct., 48, 101575.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Please find attached our reponse letter.

Kind regards,

Nathalie Sänger 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have significantly improved the quality of the paper. I recommend the paper for publication. 

Author Response

Many thanks for your very valuable comment and apologies for having missed addressing it during the last revision. We have added a paragraph as requested.