A Combined Approach of Remote Sensing, GIS, and Social Media to Create and Disseminate Bushfire Warning Contents to Rural Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript addresses an important topic in bushfire effects mitigation, in order to prevent life losses in this type of disasters, trying to fill the information gap between bushfire occurrences and media reports. The subject of the paper is innovative in terms of combining the existing information, the used techniques being well known for a long time, aiming to use remote sensing, GIS, and social media, based near real-time visual contents (Media GIS) to support rural communities in bushfire events. The paper presents a case study of the bushfire from November 2019 in New South Wales, Australia.

The introduction section of the manuscript is well written and documented, providing the background of the study.

The methodology is well presented and I consider it useful in term of the costs reduction and public participation. It uses accessible and user friendly database and software, the GIS analysis being based on available public information, fire warning, satellite image information, Google Earth images, and other geographic (elevation, road network, etc.) and social (rescue centres, hospitals, etc.) information. The results are presented in an appropriate form. Concerning the completed Media GIS content of the NSW bushfire, useful spatial information and quantitative data about the bushfire are presented.

I suggest that the authors should underline the possibility of visualization of high resolution imagery by including more detailed figures in the case study section, the maps presented being very general and showing only large areas.

In the discussion section I suggest to clarify more if the Media GIS is published online as a form of WebGIS in Google Earth, like an interactive map, or is just producing better updated imagery for support.  Is not very clear if the local community participation is done in an active way, by offering the possibility of signaling fires or is a unidirectional information support for the public. Maybe a future direction is also using the to-be-developed mobile app for fire signaling and validation through the MODIS imagery.

Some of the specific comments are given below:

Page 10 – Figure 7 - I suggest add a separate high resolution image with a caption containing an area with buildings

Page 12 – Figure 7 - I suggest add a separate high resolution image with a caption containing a mobile blackspot

Page 13 - I suggest you remove the reference to figure 7 and 8 in the conclusions section.

Author Response

Please find attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have proposed sharing warning information in the form of social media posts for the Bushfire warning to rural Australian communities. The works are a very important aspect in awareness and mitigating loss.

1. The abstract needs balance in content. Please see: https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/cee/commkit/abstract/
2. In-text citations are not as per the journal Chicago method.
3. Fig 2, it’s better to show a parallel GE image and then zoomed one for clarity.
4. The introduction only focuses on the bushfires of Australia and suddenly concludes “Still, there is a visible information gap between bushfire occurrences and media reports.” First, there is a need to build a research gap and proper literature to back the gap and then propose a solution and novel concept. Second, the statement is not true in the current situation, if authors follow local authorities’ social media esp. twitter for both Australia and California there are multiple warnings and real-time posts for every fire or known hazard. So, it is not a new concept? Please revise and build the introduction properly. Merge research objective to introduction. See https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/broad/commkit/journal-article-introduction/
5. Also, the authors state “GIS analysis is based on available government information, fire warning, satellite data, Google Earth images, and geo-graphic (elevation, road network, etc.) and social (rescue centres, hospitals, etc.) information” meaning there are lots of digital information and authors may be simplifying it.
6. Also, the work confusingly involves near real-time figures, social media awareness for mitigation which is not done together but separately. One is near real-time while the other is all year round to the target group.
7. A major concern is the target group is rural Australians, and how much do these people have internet penetration and dependency? Most rural people rely on local media and radio compared to the internet. So, this must be realized before investing in this work. It is a limitation in the end but should be the major basis to start this work. Also, the power line and disruption in such a disaster can be considered.
8. Define semi-real time at the beginning of the research gap.
9. Not clear on the last box of fig 3. Please elaborate on the objective well.
10. The most public cannot perceive their location’s aerial view esp. in similar pattern housing areas of developed communities.
11. As the major fires database is dependent on Nasa’s database the use of data mining on this production speed is confusing.
12. The whole concept is more conceptual and is generically written. As most county or state has GIS officers, there are one of their duties. Please verify this in a lit review if this Is lacking in the case study or rural Australia as a whole.
13. -access from people was positive. Please verify this with stat or references.
14. Fig 7 and 8 requires huge effort to produce whereas GIS database and tools can produce that in no time and better information compared to this. Verify with local authorities on the topographic map database and their work on disaster management.
15. The title needs improvement, objective and work does not match properly. The discussion does not address the major result and reality. Conclusions have some relationship with an objective but lack proper future direction for Australian or global fires management issues.
16. After aligning the objective, result and discussion, revise the tile properly.

All the very best.

Author Response

Please find attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have revised the abstract with refined abstract and additional figures and addressed suggested comments. The manuscript is improved than the previous one but has become more confusing and contradicts here and there. As per the answer, the NASA database provides the fire data, Google Earth provides the high-resolution base map, and MODIS is near real-time imagery and the output shown is simply a georeferenced/image with added information. It's quite a trivial task and not sure if the authors are well aware of the full capability of Google Earth Pro and some services like the following: 

1. https://www.windy.com/-Aerosol-aod550?aod550,-28.091,143.877,5 
2. https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/mAQI/a10/cC0#6.18/-32.685/149.461

1. Google Earth already has a road and other information, and the free Pro version can simply add a Shapefile from topo map or addition of placemark that authors did.
2. After simply uploading the NASA database, the output can be easily extracted as KML or exported as an image with additional text which will be quite similar to the base output here.
3. Now adding a few extra information such as wind direction is and text is what authors have done, could this be an academic publication?
4. The concept begins with a great participatory GIS but ends with a simple imagery product.
5. There should be some more details, a product or service to the public for the impact such as following but not limited to:
1. https://doi.org/10.3362/1756-3488.2012.034 
2. https://doi.org/10.3846/jeelm.2019.9801 
3. https://doi.org/10.3390/f5102464 
6. Did authors just add a text box to Google Map just for rebuttal, if it's a static image, how will that link work?
7. Not sure if it's a real product that authors will run or it's conceptual just for publication. In reality, the work has a public impact, so doing it independently is not allowed by the local authority as it can risk many lives. The best way is to collaborate and develop this product for the local authority or take responsibility as a data/info center.
8. Reference 34’s source is https://disasterphilanthropy.org/disaster/2019-australian-wildfires/ so, the reference should be original data, not secondary paid data.
9. A suggestion for the future is in replies, try to highlight in the manuscript and add that text in a colored font in replies that you changed in the text, this saves time for reviewers and makes it easier to relate the rebuttal rather than just saying reviewer is right and I made changes.
10. I can see there are figures for social media posts. But not sure how it works? Can you provide what is the exact product and how it works? As an open-access article, try to add data/code availability and add data sources, models, and various result cases which can not be placed in manuscript in public repositories such as Zenodo or GitHub or official websites (eg https://northernchange.brown.edu/data-and-code/) so that it can be evaluated and also there will be an actual use and implication. See above DOIs.

All the very best.

Author Response

Dear Sir,

Thank you for taking your time to review my article 2 times. I did my best to address the areas you have mentioned. I completely created the figure 7 again, since you assumed it was a simply created through google placemarks.

Thank you for your valuable comments,

Kithsiri, USQ, Australia

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed most of the comments and improved the manuscript. It is understandable that it's not easy to adapt everyone’s perspective in a manuscript. But reviewers are also readers of the manuscript who can provide feedback on your work. A reviewer is spending hours reading, searching and writing long comments just to improve the work. If a reviewer can not understand or see it simply then there will be 100s of other readers thinking the same. Take a step back and evaluate the improvement of the manuscript and clearer documentation of the work. Publications have an impact when readers can understand and build the concept over it, else it will be just another publication.

And for the response, the track-changes pdf is very difficult to follow sometimes and sometimes the publisher provides reformatted ones, so copy-pasting the change text along with reply makes it easy to find the text and understand the updates in the manuscript easier. 

Looking forward to the application and real work collaboration with authorities, feedback from Australian territories. Wish you all the very best.