Multivariate Optimization in Large-Scale Building Problems: An Architectural and Urban Design Approach for Balancing Social, Environmental, and Economic Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper provides a study to investigate the role of economic, social and building objectives, as support in the decision-making and in the design in a large-scale view. The study, even if enough simplified,  could be defined as prone for a "sustainability score", which can be really useful for optimizing the urban design. Important aspect is the use of genetic algorithm as analysis method, which is one of the most adopted approach in this kind of study. Certainly, the paper is well-written and it deserves to be published in Sustainability Journal. This referee suggests to authors to take into account some additions or to answer to some questions, in order to improve the clarity of the paper:

• In the introduction, with reference to social and economic losses, it is possible to mention the problems related to the elevated risk in the greater part of the world, caused to natural hazard acting on vulnerable building stock. With this regard, a classic example can be represented by earthquakes, which are object of intensive large-scale studies for driving decision-makers. Here, I report a couple of examples, which can be considered in the literature, such as school buildings (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101807) or historical masonry churches (Ruggieri S., Tosto C., Rosati G., Uva G., Ferro G.A. (2020) Seismic vulnerability analysis of masonry churches in Piemonte after 2003 Valle Scrivia Earthquake: post-event screening and situation 17 years later. International Journal of Architectural Heritage. https://doi.org/10.1080/15583058.2020.1841366). if the authors believe this aspect relevant, they can consider this additional information.
• Row 118 – Did fitness function mean fitting function?
• Row 146 – to eliminate a “solutions” and insert a comma
• Row 159 - Maybe is better to anticipate the methodology adopted (NGSA II), not only by referring to an existing work but by providing broad information about it. Also later, authors do not provide information about the methodology adopted for finding the optimum solution
• Table 1 - How did you fix that limits bound for the two parameter considered? Why did you use only these 5 typologies?  Why did you consider only the use destination and the height? Maybe other parameters could be more interesting to investigate. In general, an additional figure on the area investigated could be clarify these aspects
• At the end, in the practice, how can author's results support the designers in their work? Maybe a sentence needs to be added in the conclusion about this topic
• References should be formatted according to the rest of the document

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the application of an optimization algorithm has made it possible to propose a solution to the authors' proposal, there are many basic errors when calculating the environmental, economic and social impact. Due to these errors, it is very difficult to ensure that the results obtained are correct.

Some of the points that should be improved for the article to be published are highlighted below:

ABSTRACT:

It is not clear which is or are the results and conclusions of the paper

INTRODUCTION:

-It is not clear.

-It is also not clear what is the objective of this article and what is its novelty in relation to all the works previously carried out

METHODOLOGY

-It is not clearly described.

-It does not provide enough information to be later applied in a case study

-It does not seem necessary to have a single subsection (2.1)

APPLICATION:

-It is not at all clear how the economic, social and environmental impacts are obtained

-The authors define that the environmental cost function seeks to minimize life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. However, they have assessed only same stages of the life-cycle: operational and production stain. However, other life-cycle stages such as construction stage, replacement, maintenance or end-of-life stages have not been considered. Which is the reason of this simplification of the system boundary?

-Furthermore, which is the data source of the life-cycle assessment? Which kind of LCIA methodology has been applied?

-There is not any information about the life-cycle assessment process.

-If the environmental analysis has considered the life cycle perspective, why not the economic analysis? Why are the criteria different when they are later to be evaluated in the same optimization process?

 

OTHER COMMENTS:

-The paper is not based on the template provided by the journal. Please, review the format of Tables

-Try to avoid the use of “we”

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting with multi-topic issues related to sustainability buildings.

In my opinion, the article needs a small correction to make it more clear before publication.

Particular suggestions: 

Line 13 - citation in the abstract is not desirable.

It seems that in the text is a lot od double space, e.g. Lines: 13, 15, 17

Lines: 138-143 the citation is nice but not necessary; it could be changed in the authors’ relation in one or two sentences.

There is no reference to Table 3 in the text.

It is not clear what values mean in Table 2, e.g. Tournament Selection with Tournament Size 10,  Jump (Probability 0.1) and Creep (Probability 0.75) with Elitism of 1. Are they the names of software programs? 

 

I suggest putting a section: “Drawbacks and limitation of the method”. There are discussed in Conclusion, what is in the wrong place.

 

When authors use the words “weak” “well” “stronger correlation” to describe figures 6-8 could they describe it using colours of dots?  

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on the reviewers suggestions, the authors have improved same sections. However, :
-the improvement of the introduction section is not enough

-Methodology: the space limitation is not a justification.

-Materials and method: this section has been improved. However, still there are some critical challenge, specially related to the application of the LCA method.

-Where is the section "3"?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, 

I would like to highlight two challegens:

1-I have not recerived ay docuemnt defining the improvements related to this new version

2-Again, the authors insert "we" during the text (something that it was highlighted during the firs revision": ..."We propose the use of the genetic algorithm as a tool..."

other comments:

-The authrs have considred most of the suggesitons proposed by the reviewer

-Which is the difference between "3.6 discussion" and "4 discussion"?

-again, directly related to the first revisions: is it necessary to have a single subsection? (4.1)

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Please see replies below:

• I have uploaded a new manuscript with each reply.  Hopefully you are receiving these?  I asks me to upload the response first, so perhaps there is some delay?
• Sorry about the errant "we."  It is a bad habit of mine.  It is fixed in this version.
• Section 3.6 has been renamed to "Results Evaluation."  Section 4 is now the only section titled "Discussion."
• I have removed the "4.1" designation from the limitations section and left that header un-numbered. 

Thanks again for your attentive review.  The paper is stronger for your input.

Best,

Grant Mosey