Indicators for the Smart Development of Villages and Neighbourhoods in Baltic Sea Coastal Areas

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Regarding the abstract

In the abstract, the main emphasis is placed on the relevance of spatial planning of coastal areas. However, the novelty of the research, research methods and results obtained by the authors are not described.
The research of indicators for territory development and geographic information systems using for solving spatial planning problems are widely used by scientists around the world. It is not clear from the abstract what the originality of the proposed study is.
Authors declare that "small territory planning involves a very narrow circle of individuals or communities...", and further announce that this narrow circle identify  such a wide and diverse range of tasks as "...spatial development needs for the future, that includes socio-economic, cultural and historical, environmental and climate change scenarios". It is unclear what the authors keep in mind.

 

Regarding the article

The article is very interesting for readers and beyond any doubt the relevance of this article. According to the article title the main focus in the article should be given to Indicators for Smart Development of Villages and Neighborhoods. But in the text focuses on Village, Community and Neighborhoods. It should be described the concept of «Village, Community and Neighborhoods».

Authors mentioned that …. «The use of GIS tools is to way how to collect, analyze, visualize the geospatial and analytical data…….». It’s necessary to demonstrate the results of visualization of the geospatial and analytical data.

Figure 1 seems to present indicator groups influencing village planning. And table 1 seems to present indicators influencing village planning too. The indicators shown in the figure do not correspond with the factors in the table. Therefore, it is not clear whether there is a relationship between these indicators and factors. Moreover, it is desirable to adjust the name of the figure and the table.

Authors across the article mentioned set of dimensions like social; environmental; economic, institutional, cultural, historical. However in different parts of the article some of them are lost.  Based on this, it is not clear the significance of various indicators for the authors in the study.

The information system architecture of the indicator analyzing tool (figure 3) is open for science debates because, for example, statistic data, geoinformation data, development plan are dynamic information too.

There is a mechanical error in the description of the group of indicators. The authors divide the indicators into five groups, and in the text describe six.

The conclusions should be reviewed, as they do not reflect the results of the studies obtained by the authors.

Nevertheless, we consider the publication of this article expedient taking into account the abovementioned recommendation.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for the interesting, useful and valuable review, as well as for the time you spend for this work. Your feedback helped us get better. We were looking into this issue and hoping to resolve it promptly and accurately.

I hope you will find the updated version of the paper more appropriate and in the higher quality.

We was working on all reviewers (three) feedback to reach the best version of attached file.

All the best,

Sanda Geipele

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I am a native English speaker and I had difficulty reading your paper.

From what I can ascertain, you created a model of indicators to assess sustainable development in villages along the Baltic coast. Your method of deriving your model is not clear to me. I don't know how I would use your method to do something similar where I live or whether I could use your model. How do you get from the literature review to Section 3?

You discuss GIS throughout the paper, but I don't see evidence of where or how to use it. It would help if you tested your model (Figures 1, 2, and 3) with a Baltic village. Readers could then see how well your model and the indicators performs.

It seems like you have a potentially interesting model, but I believe your paper needs more work, specifically testing your model and, if this is published in English, using a native English speaker to translate your work. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for the interesting, useful and valuable review, as well as for the time you spend for this work. Your feedback helped us get better. We were looking into this issue and hoping to resolve it promptly and accurately.

I hope you will find the updated version of the paper more appropriate and in the higher quality.

We was working on all reviewers (three) feedback to reach the best version of attached file.

All the best,

Sanda Geipele

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I read your article with interest and believe your focus a potentially helpful one. This said, I did have difficulty discerning what you take your principal analytical contribution to be. I am supposing that you mean to offer an information system/data collection architecture that might be useful to the communities you aim to assist located along the Baltic Sea. You suggest that this planning tool will enable these villages to engage in more robust planning and it might, I suppose, if combined adroitly with a range of processes to secure the needed information on a routinized basis. It was not clear to me, however, whether those jurisdictions you target now collect such information, now employ GIS and related information systems in the ways you envisage or now systematically conduct the participatory stakeholder dialogues necessary to develop the data on which your proposed architecture relies. This last is vital since your entire approach ultimately will stand or fall on the basis of the quality of information these villages sustainably collect on stakeholder values regarding key strategic foci and directions. That information in turn depends on successful efforts to develop processes by which to engage broad swathes of these communities in periodic assessments of community priorities. It is unclear to me as I write whether such does now occur or to what extent it does and in its absence your effort takes on the sheen of a formal foray into blue sky thinking but one that cannot be linked to messiness of current governance capacities, practices and processes. Apart from this concern, It is not clear to me that GIS system information automatically results in transparency as you suggest. It may certainly, but whether it does so depends on an array of factors linked to both administrative and political choices and capacities. In addition, I was not clear what communities you meant to study precisely and why, except in the most general of terms. In addition, I suggest strongly that you enlist the support of an editor as there were many sentences here whose meaning I could not grasp or that were simply incomplete. I wonder too if you might reorganize your manuscript with these points in mind and begin with an argument that you will build on prior work on the Fuzziness Index, suggest its relevance and thereafter delimit a sample and suggest how and why the forms of data gathering and aggregating for which you call COMPARE and CONTRAST to current practice and how they might augment the same in light of a specific articulation of planning goals.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for the interesting, useful and valuable review, as well as for the time you spend for this work. Your feedback helped us get better. We were looking into this issue and hoping to resolve it promptly and accurately.

I hope you will find the updated version of the paper more appropriate and in the higher quality.

We was working on all reviewers (three) feedback to reach the best version of attached file.

All the best,

Sanda Geipele

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Please make another go at the writing.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

we made a few improvements in the paper accordingly the 3rd Reviewer suggestions. Please find attached the new version.

Additionally, we will submit clarification to the 3rd Reviewer regarding the thematic.

In reply to your question regarding the English language and style, we will improve it when the paper would be accepted for publishing. We will use the Journal offered English Editing service. I think that will rise the quality of the English language style.

All the best,

Sanda Geipele

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I have read your revision with interest and can offer several reactions. First, as you note in passing GIS tools are now widely used in municipal planning processes and little you offer here by way of the architecture of such systems is new in such terms. So, I wonder what you take your contribution to be? Is it the extension of such capabilities to the village level? If so, while outlining the formal framework for such efforts may be useful, it struck me again on this reading, that such an effort would not be determinative. I mentioned in my last review that the villages would need to maintain this frame and possess the capacities to do so. More, it would need to be augmented by stakeholder engagement processes on a routine basis, a point toward which you seem to gesture in line 85. Withal, I am still struck that I cannot articulate what the analytic contribution of your piece is or how it relates to the Mediterranean Multidimensional Fuzzy Index with which you begin. Finally, and laying aside the question of whether aligning existing GIS capabilities with an indicator framework at the pocket scale represents a contribution (your apparent belief) the only theory you cite is of a pseudo-scientiific rationalist view of planning that most theorists have long rejected as inadequate or worse.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

please find attached our explanations to your questions. We made a few improvements in the paper as well.

Here I can upload only 1 file. I will upload the gala version of paper in another section here.

Regarding the English language and style - we will improve it when the paper would be accepted for publishing. We will use the Journal offered English Editing service. I think that will rise the quality of the English language style.

Thanks you so much again for your time and feedback.

All the best,

Sanda

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

I think you have done a nice job overall clarifying the character of your contribution as well as your central analytic aims in this revision. However, I wonder if you could note/highlight three things for your readers that now receive little attention. First, who constituted the experts you consulted and how did you identify them and employ their insights? Second, do the villages you are examining have the staff and financial capacity to employ the GIS system and tool you are developing? At what level of aggregation will such planning occur in practice? Finally, do you have confidence that these small communities can employ stakeholder dialogue alongside your offered system to secure needed resident input without risking their burn out? (The population numbers are quite small).

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you very much for your in-depth interest of our topic. We really appreciate the discussion and opinion you made. We see that the level of our paper definitely raised. Please find attached our answers.

The English language editing will be provided by journals editing service after we will receive the acceptance for publication.

All the best,

Sanda

Author Response File: Author Response.docx