Cooperative Strategies in Two-Echelon Rescue Delivery Environment with Accessibility Uncertainty
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
At first, I find the paper quit interesting and useful, especially for somebody how works in the field during a disasters. Describing the problem and the isolated island effect does not mean necessarily that a road is blocked. Accessibility of a place may also be caused by other reason, e.g. rod blocks, mines etc. I would recommend a wider description of the problem and then describe the two-echelon approach. It took me three times to read the paper and understand the problem. In my opinion Fig.1 alone is quite misleading because you want to distribute the delivered goods first to the LDC and then further on to the disaster victims. This is not quite clear. I recommend to call the roads a) and b) and not 0 und 1. 0 and 1 means mostly yes or no.
The last paragraph in the introduction is not necessary because the structure of the paper is quite clear. The literature review should be part of the introduction to follow the classic structure of scientific paper (introduction, material and methods, results, discussion).
Figures and Tables should be self explaining. The reader should understand a figure or a table without reading the text. All abbreviations should be explained, when they are used in the text for the first time. VRP is not explained and also the different VRP types in table 1.
In the review different strategies are compared and discussed. In one section the authors talk about delivery and routing cost and the about a gap. Is this the gap of delivery and routing costs? In some parts the paper is linguistical not very precise.
Description to the strategies used for the simulation must be part of the method section. Here the authors mix description of the strategies and discussion. This should be separated.
As far as I understand the authors use real spatial data from the Wenchaun disaster. If this is correct this should be outlined and not described as a table of a dissertation (line 332) or it should be explained in detail why they used these data.
Explanation of the 9 instances is quite complicated to read and to understand. Maybe this needs a table.
Line 359 (Error! Reference source not found.)?
The conclusion is quite clear for me and I would expect such a result. I would like see a more quantitative analysis also in relation to the cited literature or the review above. What are the costs or problems of the different strategies especially during a disaster on a national or international level and what are the benefits in detail.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Several comments are below:
- I had a hard time follow much of this manuscript. The manuscript is in need of major English editing which made it challenging to understand.
- Please define acronyms the first time it is used. For example, NGO is not defined on line 27, ECSM is not defined on line 75, VRP is not defined on line 85, etc.
- Line - the first "sentence" is not a full sentence.
- Table 1 needs major editing, including defining the acronyms and many column sizing cuts words in half. These issues made it difficult to follow and compare across studies.
- Line 218-220 - the line spacing looks different
- Section 4.1 - I'm uncertain why a team would choose a new LDC/route without considering the possibility of the road being restored. This does not seem realistic. For example, if I expect that a specific route may be unavailable (given the condition of other roads, strength of earthquake, past experience, etc), I would select a different route, and therefore, a different LDC would be selected as closest. This example didn't involve any cooperation/coordination with another team...just logic based on previous experience and observation.
- Line 359 - "Error! Reference source not found"
- Please provide additional information on how coordinates where selected. This part was not easy to follow and is critical to draw conclusions on the validity of the simulation.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
- First of all, I don't see clearly what the contribution of this research is. Especially, compared with previous research (Noyan, 2016), the study seems to have only applied the same problem to different network.
- The authors emphasize the importance of situation in “isolated island”, but I do not see how their analysis represents it. The results are based on an example network, so I wonder how the results can be validated. For instance, authors concluded that the anticipatory cooperative strategy is the most effective, but it depends on the network conditions.
- Therefore, I think this study should be re-constructed by rooting in previous findings (Noyan, 2016). They should clearly show how the algorithms and strategies are different to make enough contributions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The paper turns out to be very interesting about the topic. A minor revision is required especially regarding the following aspects: 1) the formulas written from line 156 to line 172 must be explained step by step and also must be written in a more uniform way; 2) the notations written from line 175 to line 203 must be rewritten in a more legible way; 3) appendix A has a difficult to read script and some words are written on a different level; 4) as a possible future development, the use of self-driving vehicles in disaster scenarios could be envisaged (e.g. "A survey on driverless vehicles: from their diffusion to security features" and "The development of autonomous driving vehicles in tomorrow's smart cities mobility"Author Response
See attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
According to the first review the authors made some minor technical revisions and improve language. I strongly recommend a scientific format for the paper including an introduction which describes the problem in detail, giving a clear overview about the current knowledge. At the moment in the literature overview the authors mix up current knowledge and discussion, e.g. lines 165 to 178 are part of the scientific questions and not part of the literature review.
Than describing the scientific question and the methods in a separate chapter. Problem formulation and description of the investigated strategies are part of the methods. Also the computational experiments. This part is also a mixture of methods and results.
Conclusions should include present literature and should discuss the results in the light of actual knowledge. I strongly recommend to restructure the paper to a more scientific style and clearly separate introduction, research question, methods, results and discussion.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your constructive comments. Please find the reply report.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I have no more comment.
Author Response
Thanks for your feedback in the first round of review.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Thanks for considering my comments. I agree to pubish the paper in the present form.
