Information Needs of Gravel Road Stakeholders

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper organization is overall kind, but many sections are only narrative.

The research problem investigated by the Authors is interesting and non very common. So the approach, the methodology and the final considerations could be suitable for any other road authorities within European road network.

I would suggest to maximize consideration about Sensor tools (time stamp, sensor type, reading. etc) when increasing of Connected Automated Vehicles would move within road network. CAVs or other type of autonomous vehicle will be crucial in order to improve and to expand the road detection and data information

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Reviewer comment: I would suggest to maximize consideration about Sensor tools (time stamp, sensor type, reading. etc) when increasing of Connected Automated Vehicles would move within road network. CAVs or other type of autonomous vehicle will be crucial in order to improve and to expand the road detection and data information

Reply: Thank you for the valuable suggestion. This is an interesting effect of increased access to open road information. Even if the main area of application for this study is maintenance, collected road data could be used for other purposes as well. We, therefore, added some discussion regarding the effect of open information access for maintenance, safety, and general road positioning in the conclusions (see rows 597-606).

Reviewer 2 Report

This study aims to collect information needs of gravel road stakeholders with the main objective to explore the information needs of stakeholders within the Swedish gravel road ecosystem. The work was developed using data obtained through 11 interviews involving key stakeholders in the ecosystem, and the results of the interviews were analysed through template analysis. The main results were a set of information needs covering road identification and condition, weather conditions, accessibility and traffic, maintenance policy, and sensor data. According to the authors, these findings might be useful in order to set a model for the further development of a cloud-based gravel road management system.

The paper is clear and well organized. The issue dealt with is interesting, but major revisions are needed.

Point 1: The literature review reported in Section 1 "Introduction" appears to be too dated. In order to highlight the contemporary relevance of the topic discussed, the authors should report some more recent papers (years 2021 and 2022).

Point 2: The authors should better clarify the gap in scientific knowledge they intend to fill. For this aim, they might add some sentences at the end of Section 1 "Introduction".

Point 3: According to the reviewer, in order to obtain results of general validity, the authors should have conducted a much larger number of interviews. In fact, 11 interviews appear to be too few. Therefore, the authors should report in Section 2 “Materials and Methods” some comments on the significance of the data sample used, explaining whether in their opinion the results obtained are of general validity.

Point 4: The authors should indicate in Section 5 "Conclusions" the limitations of their study, as well as what might be the main future developments of research in this field.

Author Response

Thank you for the valuable and relevant feedback. The authors have revised the manuscript based on the comments, see details on the revisions below.

Point 1: The literature review reported in Section 1 "Introduction" appears to be too dated. In order to highlight the contemporary relevance of the topic discussed, the authors should report some more recent papers (years 2021 and 2022).

Reply: The theoretical review/state-of-the-art in the introduction was restructured and extended, and newer references were added to the introduction, see especially refs. 13, 14, 21, 26, 29, and 30.

Point 2: The authors should better clarify the gap in scientific knowledge they intend to fill. For this aim, they might add some sentences at the end of Section 1 "Introduction".

Reply: A description of the two main research gaps with respect to gravel road maintenance, lack of research in cloud-based and open-source information sharing, and lack of a holistic stakeholders’ perspective on information systems development, was added to the introduction (see rows 154-162).

Point 3: According to the reviewer, in order to obtain results of general validity, the authors should have conducted a much larger number of interviews. In fact, 11 interviews appear to be too few. Therefore, the authors should report in Section 2 “Materials and Methods” some comments on the significance of the data sample used, explaining whether in their opinion the results obtained are of general validity.

Reply: The authors do recognize the problem with generalization based on limited number of respondents. However, the main research approach is design research methodology (DRM), and data gathering is made based on the principles of grounded theory, thus repeating data gathering until no new essential information is given. This is better explained under the section Materials and methods. More details regarding the research approach were added to the section as well.

Point 4: The authors should indicate in Section 5 "Conclusions" the limitations of their study, as well as what might be the main future developments of research in this field.

Reply: A part where limitations and future research is outlined was added in the conclusions (see rows 619-634).

Reviewer 3 Report

In attachment

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the valuable and relevant feedback. The authors have revised the manuscript based on the connects, see details on the revisions below.

Section 1: Please indicate what the contribution of the article to science is.

Reply: A description of the two main research gaps with respect to gravel road maintenance, lack of research in cloud-based and open-source information sharing, and lack of a holistic stakeholders’ perspective on information systems development, was added to the introduction (see rows 154-162) and a description of the main contributions was added to the conclusions (see rows 587-590).

Section 2. How was the data saturation level determined (line 146), and by whom? The article does not indicate how the respondents were selected (specific people participating in the study, not stakeholder groups). The article lacks the presence of the research method in the form of a diagram representing the subsequent steps of the procedure.

Reply: The main research approach is design research methodology (DRM), and data gathering is made based on the principles of grounded theory. This is now better explained under the section Materials and methods. For making the research process more transparent, descriptions and a figure explaining the research approach was added, which address the comments of the reviewer.

Section 3: It is worth considering whether it is a good idea to indicate the information needs of each group of stakeholders in the table (a clear statement of needs vs. their use in the decision-making process). Does the need for the same type of information imply the same amount of information needed? For example, the set of "Traffic factors" is very capacious. Do all the indicated stakeholders need information about the same factor or are the information needs in this set different?

Reply: Information regarding how information is used by the stakeholders was added to section 4, instead of extending Table 1. The information need was in Table 1 described on different levels of aggregation, though. This was adjusted so “weather conditions” and “traffic factors” were replaced with “Rain and snow, humidity, temperature” and “speed, traffic volume, heavy vehicles”, respectively.

Section 4: To improve the quality of the presented results, I propose to present in the diagram how the proposed scope of the information system covers the information needs of individual stakeholders. The literature review is not in section 2.1 (line 365)

Reply: The idea seems good, and we tested to incorporate this into the figure describing the information model. However, the increased number of details in the figure made it hard to read. Instead, we extended the descriptions of each piece of information in 4.1-4.7. We hope this increases the overall readability and understanding of the results. Correct reference to the literature review has been made.

Section 5: The article lacks an indication of what constitutes the scientific value of the article and what will be the future directions of further research by the author.

Reply: Main contributions and future research are outlined in the conclusions (see rows 619-634).

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper can be accepted.

Author Response

We would like to, once more, thank you for the valuable input. As suggested by reviewer #3, the manuscript has undergone a thorough language check.

Reviewer 3 Report

I regret that the authors failed to follow my advice on adding diagrams in section 4. But their readability arguments convinced me to waive this requirement. The presentation of the research method could have been better illustrated, but it is important that the authors have prepared the fundamental diagram.

There are some spelling mistakes in the text. Please correct them.

Author Response

We would like to, once more, thank you for the valuable input. As requested, the manuscript has undergone a thorough language check.