A Fire Evacuation and Control System in Smart Buildings Based on the Internet of Things and a Hybrid Intelligent Algorithm

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This research proposes a new way for a smart building fire evacuation and control system based on the IoT to efficiently direct individuals along an evacuation route in the event of fire incidents. This study uses a hybrid natural-inspired optimization method, which reduces the execution time and cost by 10.41 % and 25 %, respectively.

There are still some formatting errors in the text, including units, superscripts, subscripts, capitalization, lowercase, etc.

Author Response

Comment: This research proposes a new way for a smart building fire evacuation and control system based on the IoT to efficiently direct individuals along an evacuation route in the event of fire incidents. This study uses a hybrid natural-inspired optimization method, which reduces the execution time and cost by 10.41 % and 25 %, respectively. There are still some formatting errors in the text, including units, superscripts, subscripts, capitalization, lowercase, etc.

Response: You raise the important issue and your input is very helpful for improving the manuscript. We agree to your comments and we have revised my manuscript. In addition, the language of the article was edited entirely in collaboration with a native language editor.

Reviewer 2 Report

The researchers proposed a new algorithm to solve an optimization problem for fire evacuation, using Internet of Things (IoT) sensor technology. In terms of Originality and Contribution to Scholarship, the researchers are using a hybrid model of a recently developed algorithm, the Emperor Penguins Colony and a Particle Swarm Optimization.

 

Their experimental results look solid, resulting in slight improvements in execution time and energy consumption, which are important in the real life implementation of these IoT sensor systems and can be regarded as important to the improvement of the State of the Art.

 

My main issue with the paper is the reference system during the paper, the author seems to faulty refences to what is actually being textualized. The text also requires extensive English review.

 

Example 1:

“Emperor Penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) are the largest penguin species [21].”

Reference [21] is the reference to the development of the Emperor Penguins Colony algorithm, and although they might explicitly say in the paper that information, it is a shame that Reference [21] is only used for this phare and for the relation between Cartesian and Polar coordinates, when it’s one of the basis of the work.

 

Example 2:

“The four algorithms are tested on various test scenarios in this section. There are three examples in the literature, and 80 instances with various dimensions and complexity levels are picked randomly. Each of the four algorithms has a number of parameters.” This phrase requires the citation of all the four algorithms, or at this moment is quite unclear what are the algorithms that were tested, and specially since Table 2 is confusing and should be reworked in order to have a simpler identification of each algorithm and their parameters.

 

Example 3: 

“Many studies have paid particular attention to energy consumption.” But then there’s no reference to such studies.

 

The biology information of the Emperor Penguins in Section 3.3 seem unnecessary and should be removed, along with their references. Please keep only information pertaining the development of the algorithm and its usage.

 

In terms of acronyms, please identify the acronyms also in the main paper, not only in the Abstract, examples: IoT is not identified, DCA is not identified.

MATLAB should have a ® mark after it’s name, as it is a registered trademark. The version of MATLAB should be identified, along with any library that was used. Version of Python should also be identified, along with any library that was used.

“The obtained results to assess the criteria parameters of the energy consumption, execution time, and the cost is shown in Figs. 6, 7, and 8.” In line 434 Should be “are shown”.

In Section 3.1, it is described the workflow of the IoT system, along with the Figure 1, but I don’t understand how the system only starts after a fire starts. Shouldn’t the system be always on the lookout to identify smoke and fire alarm signals? It also seems that in Figure 1, step 1 and 2 occur at the same time and are concurrent and not in a sequence. Please make a clearer image of the workflow, because in Figure 1 the sequence is not clear.

Figure 3, should be reviewed in terms of English and coherence., example: “Create the initialpenauins·populations”, “profil” and “update the position of each agent check if there is a better solution than previous optimal”. There doesn’t seem to be a step where a previous optimal is created/identified. Is the previous optimal calculated as the Huddle boundary? It should be identified as that value then.

 

For the paper to be accepted, I think it need a major revision of the English, and a thorough revision of all the citations.

Author Response

It has been attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I believe that the authors were able to correct all the appointed comments and made a large effort to improve the paper to a point that it meets the standards of work for the Fire Journal, so it's my opinion that it can be accepted in the present form. I would still make a final revision of any english/phrases that missed both the authors and reviewers.

Best regards