Assessment of Coastal Locations Safety Using a Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process-Based Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have provided an interesting study; however it needs some improvements as follows:

1. Abstract is not suitable; therefore, you need to improve the abstract. You must consider for writing abstract including; study research problem and objectives study methods, study key results or arguments and study conclusion. First, you need to be defining the purpose of your research. What theoretical or practical problem does the research respond to, or what research question did you aim to answer? Next, you need to indicate the research methods that you used to answer your question. Then, summarize the main study results. Finally, state the main conclusions of your research: what is your answer to the problem or question?
2. I advise authors to clearly explain why they have preferred to improve AHP method. What was their motivation to implement AHP and what benefits they have seen comparing the other MCDM methods?
3. The introduction should highlight the novelty and motivation of study, in fact, the introduction should be clearly stated research questions and targets first. Then answer several questions: Why is the topic important (or why do you study on it)? What are the research questions? What has been studied? What are your contributions? Why is to propose this particular method?
4. I advise authors to present the current literature and their contribution to the literature with a summary table as a new section.
5. Some MCDM papers should be discussed in the manuscript as follows: (i) Fuzzy Einstein WASPAS approach for the economic and societal dynamics of the climate change mitigation strategies in urban mobility planning. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 61, 1-17. (ii) Comprehensive Model for Socially Responsible Rehabilitation of Mining Sites Using Q-rung Orthopair Fuzzy Sets and Combinative Distance-based Assessment. Expert Systems with Applications, 117155.
6. The flowchart of proposed model should be added.
7. The research strategy of the study is not provided. What kind of strategy did you use for this study? Did you perform any interviews?
8. The data and the procedure of the data collection are not clear.
9. The authors need to discuss about the limitations of the proposed method as well as case study limitations, what are your recommendations for future works, how the proposed method solved the case study problem.
10. How practitioners can use the proposed method in the real life problems, how the proposed method is useful for future studies.

Author Response

Dear reviewer: In accordance with the suggestions made to this work, we appreciate the support in this process, and we want to indicate the improvements made to the manuscript in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This material is of scientific interest.

For example, the coastal landscape has been assessed on the basis of 26 parameters, which are supported by proven and sufficiently tested methods. The main approach is based on a coastal safety index that takes into account tides, bathymetry, temperature and wind speed on the basis of weight and importance. In addition, a computational model has been developed that estimates coastal safety based on geographical characteristics, weather conditions and physical parameters. Most importantly, safety was examined not only based on available statistical data, but also based on parameters such as solar radiation, wind speed, bathymetry and tidal height.

Secondly, the importance of this study lies in the fact that all materials and methods are proven and known in science. The merit of the authors is that in this work all safety parameters have been calculated based on the specific physical parameters of the study areas, which enabled the calculation of acceptable ranges of safety parameters.

Thirdly, the study is based on a comparison of the parameters of all factors and weights, which allowed the calculation of a safety index based on 336 samples for each location, obtained at a specific time and day of the study.

The instrumentation and methodology are therefore convincing and of scientific interest. It seems to me that the methodology can be applied to any coastal area of any country.

Author Response

Dear reviewer: In accordance with the suggestions made to this work, we appreciate your support in this process, and the authors are motivated in publishing this work.

Best Regards!

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript presents good investigation results and is useful for coastal areas' safety. However, even though the paper can, for the most part, be read and understood, it does require proofreading because there are some grammatical errors and typos. Therefore, the author should consider the following comments to improve the quality of the manuscript.

1. The abstract should be redrafted to include basic elements an abstract should contain. However, please stick to the following format:

Briefly start with a general overview of the research problem, the study's objective, and the motivation of the research. Then, shortly provide a basic clue on the methodology; avoid details and stories in the abstract. Next, discuss the results that directly relate to the research objectives and conclusions, including the numeric findings, if any. Lastly, conclude by selecting the most important implication, application, or suggestion related to the problem statement and main results.

2. The authors mentioned that local experts were considered in prioritizing the tourism sites factors (Line 156-160). Data used for AHP are assumed to be obtained through a questionnaire survey filled in by some well-versed experts in the area. Hence, the assessment of factors responsible for coastal locations' safety, for example, must require expert groups of leading specialists, as mentioned in the manuscript, to rank the evaluation criteria. However, an AHP questionnaire using Saaty’s scale of relative importance is required with the number of respondents in the survey. The authors didn't mention how many experts were interviewed, their expertise, and their years of experience. Moreover, justification for using a specific number of experts should be given and supported by recent references. See the study below as an example:

Dano, U. L. (2020). Flash Flood Impact Assessment in Jeddah City: An Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach. Hydrology, 7(1), 10.

This will allow other researchers to replicate the study. Also, an appendix section should be created to add the questionnaire sample. 

3. The authors should mention the population of each of the evaluation sites in the method section.
4. Under the Results & Discussion section, the authors should take the weights calculation and data collection to the method section by condensing, harmonizing, and reorganizing the method section.
5. In the conclusion section, the authors should include a paragraph describing the study’s major findings and limitations.
6. Lastly, make sure you used the correct format for references. The references also need to be checked to ensure that all the required location information, such as page numbers and volume (journal articles), the publisher and place of publication (books), or dates (for conferences), are complete. Similarly, access dates for website materials should be added.

Author Response

Dear reviewer: In accordance with the suggestions made to this work, we appreciate the support in this process, and we want to indicate the improvements made to the manuscript in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All issues have been successfully addressed by authors.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.