Thermal Remote Sensing from UAVs: A Review on Methods in Coastal Cliffs Prone to Landslides

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript has about 600 lines of text and 660 lines of references.....

Yes, it is a methods review, but any comparison of different methods are shown.

A critical review of the literature is recommended.

Reconsider to strong reduction of the citations. Few are also incomplete.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer1, 

thank you for your suggestions. We attach the file with the responses to your comments, and you will find in the revised manuscript all the requested modifications and integrations.

As you will see, we accepted all your very useful suggestions.

We checked the English grammar and punctuation.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments to the manuscript submitted for Remote Sensing (MDPI): " Thermal Remote Sensing from UAVs: A review on methods in coastal cliffs prone to landslides”.

The paper presents a review on algorithms and methods for the acquisition of geomechanical information from landslide-prone coastal cliffs in soil and rock using UAV-borne thermal infrared sensors. Particularly, the paper discusses the main issues related to the understanding of the thermal behavior of landslide-prone coastal cliffs and its correlation with geological features. On the base of the information gathered in the literature reviewed, Authors proposed a three steps methodological approach to produce TIRs.

The paper is interesting, well structured and written.

This reviewer thinks that the manuscript needs a minor revision before being considered for publication.

Minor comments have been reported in the attached pdf file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer2,

thank you for your comments.

We agreed with your suggestions, as you can see in the attached file with the answers and in the revised version of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Given this manuscript is a review article on methods in coastal cliffs prone to landslides using earth observation data, in this case, thermal remote sensing from UAVs, this article perhaps should embrace the literature that are using UAVs for landslides as well as other novel machine learning techniques that are recently been used for landslides mapping. I will provide below the sample relevant literature that reflects UAVs, machine learning, deep learning and spatial statistics for landslides mapping. These will provide a comprehensive scientific breadth in this article.

Other aspects this article should perhaps present is: a narrative by answering the below questions in respective sections.  

1. What is the contribution of this paper to the remote sensing community?  - This one can be presented in the introduction.

2. Why is this contribution significant (What impact will it have)? This one can be presented in the introduction.

3. What is the distinctive new message that is provided from the current paper relative to those previously published works?

This one can be formulated into three key discussion threads in the discussion sections.

The missing literatures that will add great value to this manuscript with associated relevance are listed below.

1. Ghorbanzadeh, Omid, et al. "UAV-based slope failure detection using deep-learning convolutional neural networks." Remote Sensing 11.17 (2019): 2046.

Relevance: UAV, Landslide, novel techniques

2. Tavakkoli Piralilou, Sepideh, et al. "Landslide detection using multi-scale image segmentation and different machine learning models in the higher Himalayas." Remote Sensing 11.21 (2019): 2575.

Relevance: UAV, Landslide, novel techniques

3. Rajbhandari, Sachit, et al. "Benchmarking the applicability of ontology in geographic object-based image analysis." ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 6.12 (2017): 386.

Relevance: Landslide, novel techniques

4. Ghorbanzadeh, Omid, et al. "Evaluation of different machine learning methods and deep-learning convolutional neural networks for landslide detection." Remote Sensing 11.2 (2019): 196.

Relevance: UAV, Landslide, novel techniques

5. Roodposhti, Majid Shadman, Jagannath Aryal, and Biswajeet Pradhan. "A novel rule-based approach in mapping landslide susceptibility." Sensors 19.10 (2019): 2274.

Relevance: Landslide, novel techniques

6. Shadman Roodposhti, Majid, et al. "Fuzzy shannon entropy: a hybrid GIS-based landslide susceptibility mapping method." Entropy 18.10 (2016): 343.

Relevance: Landslide, novel techniques

I will be happy to re-read and review the next iteration.

Regards,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer3,

we analyzed with attention to your suggestions, and you may see our responses in the attached file. 

In the revised manuscript you will find some integrations with your proposed topics.

Thank you for your interest in this topic.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Fix few issue in the figures

Comments for author File: Comments.PDF

Author Response

Dear Reviewer1,

thank you for your suggestions.

In the revised version of the manuscript, the changes described in the attached pdf, with the answers to the comments are provided.

best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for addressing most of my comments/suggestions, appreciated. I encourage you to re-read the manuscript from a coherent English flow perspective and apply the corrections. For example, at the moment, abstract and introduction need careful editing. Please have a look at the repeated words in the abstract for example.

Other than that, this manuscript is improved quite a lot from earlier iteration and I advise you to proceed to the next stage. In particular, the relevant articles are cited and irrelevant ones are removed which shows careful attention to the state-of-the-art literature by the authors. 

Regards,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer3,

thank you for your comments.

The revised submitted manuscript has been checked.

As suggested, English grammar has been verified and some sentences have been modified.

Best regards

maria teresa melis