Research on Population Spatiotemporal Aggregation Characteristics of a Small City: A Case Study on Shehong County Based on Baidu Heat Maps

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper dealing with the use of Baidu Heat Map and data in order to understand how the Sheong citizens are polarized to the different urban function during the weekend and the workaday. The paper shows some interesting methods and analysis but some weak points as well. First of all: on what reference is based the statement on line 32? At line 98 is declared that the software used as web crawler is the train collector 8.5 that seems a week tool for this aim. Furthermore, before to start the analysis of the heat maps, could be useful to describe the functional map (activity locations) of Sheong. Line 263:
other statistical methods, from inside the GIS, can be used to analyze the spatial distribution of population aggregation. At the end some interesting comparisons could be developed among the different results. Finally could be interesting to get authors meditations about the potential usage of findings of the study that could be useful for the local government, stakeholders, etc..

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is an interesting one, presenting a novel analysis on population changes during daytimes in Chinese cities, using a feature of the popular Chinese search engine Beidou. In particular the heat maps have been used for analysing changes in urban parts of a test city, during different times of the day and in different days.
The paper present elements of novelty as no many papers were written on the topic. In particular, no many studies have been developed over Chinese cities, therefore allowing an insight into these rapidly changes urban areas and how people behave spatially in these contexts.
However, some changes are still needed from different points of view.
Literature is mainly and basically referred to Chinese authors. Being heat maps developed widely  in the world, more references could be introduced and proposed.
Being the application of of Beidou maps quite new for the international audience, some more details concerning the ways in which it works and how the data have been extracted from them would be appreciated.
With reference to the maps realized, an overview map of the study area with respect to China would be appreciated. Maps are always missing scale. Readers do not have evidence of the dimension of the city mapped.
Some extra data concerning the characteristic of the city would be appreciated, i.e., the dimension of the city itself and how the density from heatmaps is related to  the true - expected or real - distribution of the residential population (in case this data is available).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

the paper was completed following the indications of the review.