Coal Seam Thickness Prediction Based on Transition Probability of Structural Elements

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the introduction the authors should introduce more insights into coal mining. In present form the article is too mathematicised. The conclusions should also show how the results could be used in practice and how they contribute in the present state of art.

Author Response

Dear revirewer,

Thanks for your suggestions, and we improved the paper according to your advice. The inmproved as follows:

1.         Added research background on coal mining safety

2.         Supplemented the application of our method: our method can be used to generate the coal-rock interface and predict the coal seam thickness precisely, and those data will be used to guide the shearer drum to automatically adjust the coal cutting height in automatically and intelligently coal mining.

3.         Added the related references

4.         Check and edited the English language

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I believe there are some good ideas in this paper. And even though I think the structure is sometimes confusing, it is too late to change that now. So I recommend publication, after some more issues are fixed:

- Eq (5) is wrong, the denominator square root should have \sigma^2, or the square root must end before the \sigma

- Eq (8), the sum is over i and j pairs, not like it is now which appears to be only over i?

- Eq (7) and (8), why do you use both h and d for distance? No need to double-use notation here.

- 2.3 Caption: algrothim? -> algorithm

- Below Eq (11); other Researcher used -> other researchers used

- Below Step 9: the structural elements contains -> the structural elements contain

- Below Step (9): that each point -> where each point 

- Remove capital letters in Yuan reference.

- The Markov transition reference [17] is on an application for fraud detection and [18] on a medical application. For this paper there are several geoscience works that I think are more relevant, e.g.: 

* Eidsvik, Jo, Tapan Mukerji, and Paul Switzer. "Estimation of geological attributes from a well log: an application of hidden Markov chains." Mathematical Geology 36.3 (2004): 379-397.

* Larsen, Anne Louise, et al. "Bayesian lithology/fluid prediction and simulation on the basis of a Markov-chain prior model." Geophysics 71.5 (2006): R69-R78.

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

Thanks for your suggestions, and we improved the paper according to your advice. The improved as follows:

1.         Checked and re-edited the formula 5 and 8

2.         For formula 7 and 8, we used the ‘d’ to indicate the distance

3.         Modified the reference and added references for the background of coal mining safety

4.         Supplemented the application of our method

5.         improved the English languages

Author Response File: Author Response.docx