Namares—A Surface Inventory and Intervention Assessment Model for Urban Resource Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study developed a highly resolved GIS based approach to enable a spatially explicit identification and techno-economic assessment of intervention measures for a more advantageous utilisation of available surfaces per land parcel. It uses existing data and covers the management of economic, ecological, and technical resources. The approach is applied to a case study redevelopment area in a large city in Germany. The approach enables a comprehensive quantification, localisation, and assessment of intervention potentials to enhance decision support and mitigate adverse effects from densely built and populated areas. The innovation degree and practicability of the research content are strong, and the analysis and treatment of the research object are good. However, there are still some aspects that may can be improved:

1. The research objects of this study include impervious water surface, land and outer surface of buildings. Among which, land does not belong to impervious water surface, but the topic is about the identification and utilization of impervious surface.
2. In order to sustainably treat land use and impervious surface in urban development, this study adopts five grades. What are the criteria and basis for selecting the five-levels of hierarchy?
3. More basis should be discribled for the selection of evaluation indicators in Table 7?  
4. The method and accuracy of identifying impervious surface are not clearly stated.
5. The values of Table 6 need more demonstration or explanation. How to get or calculate those values in other cities?
6. Put forward some impervious water surface utilization and restoration measures, its practicality, Operability, and possible problems should be analysised.
7. Most literatures cited are from Europe, and there are many related researches in other countries, so literatures from other countries should be added.
8. An abbreviation list is useful if added at the end of the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your comments. We revised the manuscript based on 3 reviewer comments and respond to your comments in the attachment. Please see the attachment and revised manuscript. On behalf of all authors, best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript presents a highly resolved GIS-based approach to enable a spatially explicit identification and techno-economic assessment of intervention measures and applies it to a city in Germany. To be honest, I am confused about the title of this article. I can't quite understand what the authors are trying to express from the title. The article has scope to publish in the journal but not in the present form. The title of the article needs further polishing. The abstract, introduction and conclusion need refinements. Many sentences are unclear in the manuscript. I would recommend corrections. There are some questions in this manuscript, as follows.

- The abstract doesn't show the accurate content and the main findings. Please add the main findings of the research work.

- I recommend the authors to write in the Introduction more accurately based on existing literature what is missing in previous studies, and what is the added value of this new study.

-It is better to add a map of study district for section “2.5 Case study district”.

- The conclusion should be specific. It is recommended to just highlight the key findings of the work.

- Please proofread the article carefully. There are many linguistic errors in the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your comments. We revised the manuscript based on 3 reviewer comments and respond to your comments in the attachment. Please see the attachment and revised manuscript. On behalf of all authors, best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The study illustrates a method for the reduction or utilisation of 'impervious surfaces' by the multi-parametric analysis of GIS layers. Specific comments are as follows-

• Whether buildings or infrastructure dataset has adequately represented the impervious surfaces within study area? Does it include classes such as pavements, parking lots, tarred or other impervious surfaces, etc. where urban greening interventions can be introduced? 
• Why not the remote sensing based indices such as NDISI, MNDISI, etc. for impervious surfaces detection have been used in the study besides the buildings and infrastructure dataset to understand the varying intensities of imperviousness within study area?
• How the surface sealing/materials properties have been detected from the sewer-service/runoff water charge dataset?
• Urban greening interventions also helps to regulate the land surface temperature (LST) in the vicinity. Why the LST parameter has not been used in the study?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your comments. We revised the manuscript based on 3 reviewer comments and respond to your comments in the attachment. Please see the attachment and revised manuscript. On behalf of all authors, best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed all my comments and the manuscript has been improved significantly. It will be better if the necessary references had been added in line 68.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you for your comments. We agree and revised the manuscript accordingly. Please see the attachment and revised manuscript.

On behalf of all authors, best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf