An Open Data and Citizen Science Approach to Building Resilience to Natural Hazards in a Data-Scarce Remote Mountainous Part of Nepal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

line 50-51: Need to define resilience, and explain how use of open data "enhance the resilience" , rather than just reducing vulnerability or enhancing preparedness. 

 

Figure 1: Use a locator map to highlight the two districts in Nepal, but show the two municipalities in the map body. I almost missed them in the current map, because they are so small.  

 

From the description in 2.2.3, it seems that logically the map literacy training where "participants were instructed to create new data layers and to digitize the locations they knew" using online and offline OSM tools should have taken place before remote mapping, but Figure 2 indicates otherwise. If the remote mapping is a preliminary data creation phase by six non-local mappers (please also clarify the background of the six mappers), and the OSM training is to train locals from the 2 municipalities to edit and validate the preliminary data, you may want to clarify this in the text. (I think the results section, 3.2, clarified this a little bit, but you should definitely include more clarification in the methods section about the process) 

 

2.2.5: Please include more details on how the data collected by participants were analyzed and processed. Moreover, more detail is needed on how the data were "validated jointly with mapping experts and citizen scientists." More details on this is important, as there has been some concerns over the power dynamics (top to bottom vs. bottom up) between citizen scientists and experts in these types of projects, and their impacts on the project outcomes. (example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0434-3)

 

3.3: The post-training survey of the participants about their map understanding and confidence in map reading is fine, but the study design could be strengthened using a pre-post assessment to measure the change in those things. 

 

line 225-228: I think a lot more needs to be done in this study to warrant these claims. Perhaps the output maps could be reviewed with different civil society groups, governmental entities, or community stakeholder groups in focus group settings to show how exactly they [output maps] "could be used to better understand local resources, capacities and vulnerabilities."  (much like the focus group discussions in this study: https://escholarship.org/content/qt30z7z36p/qt30z7z36p.pdf) 

 

Overall, the concept of the project is good and the paper is well written. The authors demonstrated the project's potential to increase map literacy amongst citizen scientists and to generate geospatial data in data scarce settings. However, claims about the output maps' ability to build community resilience and improve understanding of local resources need to be substantiated.   

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Citizen science approach as well as the use of big data which in many cases is based on citizen consent (not really relevant in this study but I wanted to mention this) has become an important and very useful way of understanding even complex issues prevailing in the comtemporery world. Such an approach might - at some point - be highly useful in controlling for and preventing of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Well done.

 

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's comment and suggestion. We hope to use this methods in big data analytics in future.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript proposed by the authors presents a citizen science approach to mapping the mountainous part of Nepal using OSM. The topic fits the scope of the journal, the case is relevant, and it contains new and significant information. The manuscript describes applied research which has practical value.

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's comment and recommendation for immediate publication.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My comments were adequately address by the authors. The results and conclusions of this paper can serve as the foundation of future research about the actual usefulness of co-created geospatial knowledge for various stakeholder groups.