A Dynamic Road Network Model for Coupling Simulation of Highway Infrastructure Performance and Traffic State
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review for A Dynamic Road Network Model for Coupling Simulation of Highway Infrastructure Performance and Traffic State
The title of the paper appears to be interesting. However, it has several significant problems starting from the abstract to the paper’s content. Hence, it is challenging to read and understand. I cannot recommend that this paper be published at this stage. I would recommend authors to update the paper and resubmit it. Some of my comments are listed below.
· The abstract does not clear the existing problem to be solved in the paper.
· There is an “Error! Reference source not found.” on almost all pages.
o Page 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12,
· Most of the figures and tables are not cited in the paper.
o Figure 2 and Figure 5 are not cited
o Tables 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are not cited in the paper.
o Table 1 appears on pages 5 and 9
· Page 12: sometimes figures are cross-referenced as ‘FIG. XX’ and sometimes they are referred to as ‘Figure XX’. (XX is figure number)
· OD-pair in table 12 are not symmetric. Node ID 11 is available in the column but not in the row (See below).
· In the above-highlighted text, which Figure do the authors want to refer to?
· Page 13: the font is not consistent on the page.
· The code in the ‘Appendix: Schema library pseudocode’ is not pseudocode but an actual code. Authors may want to write small understandable pseudocode.
· Please specify which Figure the authors want to refer to in the paragraphs shown in the above snippet. Also, try to keep the colour of the symbols the same in the text and Figure.
· References 3 and 8 are not appropriately cited. Authors may check other references as well.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript proposes a dynamic road network description model which is applied to the couple simulation of highway network infrastructure performance and traffic state. The research gaps or limitations highlighted in this manuscript including: 1) lack of theoretical support, lack of research on coupling mechanism; 2) the implementation of the model is limited to theoretical analysis. Some detailed comments are as follows.
Comment 1.
The research on analyzing the decay of the infrastructure performance through road network modeling should be supplemented to reflect the superiority of the proposed method.
Comment 2.
In this paper, a coupling simulation method is proposed, but the analysis of the coupling mechanism between expressway infrastructure performance and traffic state is insufficient. It is suggested to supplement the research on the coupling mechanism or related literature results.
Comment 3.
It is mentioned in section 3.2 that “The spatial scale of the road network description model can meet the requirements of the transportation network analysis and the road infrastructure service performance prediction, under a certain efficiency guarantee.” What are the specific criteria for spatial scale and how is it in this paper?
Comment 4.
Figure 5 is illogical and does not correspond well to the text content. It is suggested to reorganize and represent it in a clearer form.
Comment 5.
The paper only theoretically analyzes the proposed model by the commonly used Nguyen Dupuis network, and does not validate the model through actual scenarios and data of highways, which lacks the proof of the applicability and accuracy of the model.
Comment 6.
The proposed model is designed for long-term, planned traffic behaviors. How well does the model apply to short-term accidental traffic events? Does it provide a basis for short-term traffic management and control? This can be studied as a supplement.
Comment 7.
There are errors in the numbering of the figures, many chart titles in the text are displayed incorrectly, some titles are in wrong format, and some sentences are not clearly expressed. It is suggested that the author should check the full text format and polish the language of the paper.
Comment 8.
The content shown in Figures 6 and 7 on page 11 does not match the figure titles.
Comment 9.
Figure 6 on page 13 and Figure 7 on page 14 are not clearly displayed, so it is necessary to replace the figures with higher resolution.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
1. The paper considers the relationship between many dynamic road network models, but the article structure is relatively loose, hard to straighten out the relationship between different parts. It is recommended to add a diagram to show their complex relationships.
2. The literature review part of the article is weak, which does not meet the requirements of high-quality literature review. Moreover, the cited literatures are about 10 years ago, so more influential literatures in TRP A-E in recent years should be cited. At the same time, the second part should be combined with the corresponding literature review, but such description can hardly accurately reflect the innovation of the article in this specific field.
3. The relationships between models described by the text description, which lacks quantitative analysis. The subjective description should be transformed into objective formulas to show the correlation between different models.
4. The paper makes innovation of the traffic network model, but there is no comparison with the previous model. It is suggested to make a comparison to clearly reflect the innovation and improvement of this paper.
5. The parameter selection of the corresponding model needs to be more objective and specific, the reasons for choosing the corresponding indicators should be stated.
6. The conclusion part is too brief, the application prospect, defects, future research direction and other contents should be added.
7. There are many problems with the quotation of figures and tables, it shows “Error! Reference source not found”.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Overall, the paper is difficult to understand. I think some of the section needs major revision to improve readability.
Section 3 needs to be rewritten to improve readability. ‘Class 2-Extension topology’ in section 3.1 is very difficult to understand.
The tables should be referenced in text (for example, Table 1 shows …. ) before they are discussed in detail. The link to several references in the text is broken. There are several error messages within the text that says ‘Error! Reference source not found’. They need to be fixed.
I would recommend adding a short section to briefly discuss the high-level methodology before discussing the details of the models.
A discussion section needs to added showing evidence supporting the findings of the study.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
See the file attached
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The revision is satisfactory.
Author Response
Thanks for your comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have made further changes to the English expression of the paper based on the first revision of the manuscript. Thank you again for your comments.
Reviewer 3 Report
All the questions have been clearly addressed.
Author Response
Thanks for your comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have made further changes to the English expression of the paper based on the first revision of the manuscript. Thank you again for your comments.
Reviewer 4 Report
Thanks for addressing the comments. The manuscript has improved significantly since the last version.
I think the manuscript lacks a 'discussion' section. This section should discuss the importance/relevance of the study. It should focus on how the results relates to your literature review and how the conclusions are supported by previous literatures. Also, the gaps in the study/limitation of the models should also be identified.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
