Utilising MYTILUS for Active Learning to Compare Cumulative Impacts on the Marine Environment in Different Planning Scenarios

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. line 183, If the methofology should be put in the last section?

2. line 198, these questions should be stated.

3. line 203, The result of this PhD course is missing from the results part. Note that the feedback is confidential, but at least give some general ideas.

 

Author Response

• • Reviewer 1 comment 1: “old line 183, If the methodology should be put in the last section?”
    • Old line 181-183: “The fourth exercise ‘use-use interactions’ focused on exploring spatial patterns of potential conflicts and potential synergies between activities, based on methodology presented in [24].”
  • To reviewer 1 on comment 1:
    • We have added some more details on the methodology: New line 216-220: “The fourth exercise ‘use-use interactions’ focused on exploring spatial patterns of potential conflicts and potential synergies between activities, based on methodology presented in Bonnevie et al. (2020) [29]. A key principle of the synergy-conflict methodology is to additively add up expert-derived conflict-synergy scores for pairwise combinations of activities in the same area [29].”

   

  • Reviewer 1 comment 2: “old line 198, these questions should be stated.”
    • Old line 195-199: “These active learning attributes of using real-world cases and demanding a high reflection level are visible in the adjustments that were made to the training set included the addition of multiple reflective questions with the answers to these being required to be provided through PhD course deliverables, one per exercise.”
  • To reviewer 1 on comment 2:
    • The reflective phrasing of the questions (not the questions themselves) is already touched upon, but in a not so clearly formulated way. Thus, we have improved the explanations of how the reflective verbs relate to the questions: New line 233-240: “These active learning attributes of using real-world cases and demanding a high reflection level are visible in the adjustments that were made to the training set through the addition of multiple reflective questions with the answers to these being required to be provided through PhD course deliverables, one per exercise. The reflective character of the questions and thus of the exercises and deliverables is revealed through the use of verbs from the highest or next-highest level of ‘evaluation’ in Bloom’s Taxonomy [31], for example, including the words ‘compare’, ‘assess’, ‘explain’, and ‘present arguments’.”

   

  • Reviewer 1 comment 3: “old line 203, The results of this PhD course is missing from the results part. Note that the feedback is confidential, but at least give some general ideas.”
    • Old line 203-204: “The PhD students were encouraged to use the online Team forum to discuss with each other and the teachers regarding the purposes of the assignments as well as their results.”
  • Decision: Include reflections on the use of Microsoft Teams for online forum discussion in the results part
  • To reviewer 1 on comment 3:
    • As requested, we have decided to include reflections on the use of Microsoft Teams for online forum discussion in the paper discussions. In new line 240: The use of the phrasing “online Team forum” is specified to “the online Microsoft Teams forum”. The use of the online Teams forum for discussions is now reflected upon in the discussion section: New line 400-412: “The PhD participants expressed a need for discussions among each other and with the teachers as well as options to ask questions and provide feedback to support the learning process, but they also evaluated the time dedicated to this to be sufficient. For example, one participant highlighted how there was “enough time for us to ask questions and give feed-back” and another praised the “timely discussions on our tasks” and stated how it ”really helped us a lot to follow the course”. Such discussions were enabled by the technical inclusion of the online Microsoft Teams forum to host oral discussions, indicating the relevance of such an online communication platform to enable timely/immediate academic exchanges across the world to reach active, collaborative learning as part of an online learning environment. Despite the successful perception of the amount of time distributed for collaborative support, the feedback indicates that active learning requires time for dedication which makes dedication time an important condition for allowing such learning material to foster knowledge.”

Reviewer 2 Report

I would suggest you to add to the article some elements for description of the tool Mytilus. Deatails can be included about human activities, pressures, ecosystem components and expert-derived sensitivity scores. Two publications areferenced for these details (one quite old - 2008) but still one or more synthetic table(s) summarizing the tool features would improve the quality of the description.

Similarly, the new functionalities of Mytilus could be better illustrated with the support of a diagram/figure.

For Figure 4 you could consider to use a ranking of values that allows you to better highligh the differences between the two scenarios. I suggest this since I noticed this ranking is not the same as for Figure 2A so you don't have the need to keep it as it is. 

Considering students' feedback, I think seven feedback are quite few. Can you provide info on how many students participied in the course in total? Can you shortly discuss about the number of respondent?

I would suggest you to summarize the findings from the feedback in a table or a diagram point out the strengths and weakenesses identified.

It would be interesting to know if you plan to make Mytilus available for other users, within a community of practice or even publicly available. You might want to mention your perspective on this point in the conclusions.

 

Author Response

To reviewer 2

• Reviewer 2 comment 1: “I would suggest for you to add to the article some elements for description of the tool MYTILUS. Details can be included about human activities, pressures, ecosystem components and expert-derived sensitivity scores. Two publications are referenced for these details (one quite old – 2008) but still one or more synthetic table(s) summarizing the tool features would improve the quality of the description. Similarly, the new functionalities of Mytilus could be better illustrated with the support of a diagram/figure.”
  • To reviewer 2 on comment 1:
    • To address this comment, several changes were made. Firstly, more details are now included about human activities, pressures, ecosystem components and expert-derived sensitivity scores. More specifically, human activities are exemplified with the following: New line 153-154: “options for co-locating some activities, for example, offshore windfarms and aquaculture”. Pressures are exemplified with the following: New line 174-175: “pressures such as, for example, physical disturbance, inputs of phosphorous, and extraction of cod”. Ecosystem components are exemplified with the following: New line 176-177: “ecosystem components such as, for example, coastal lagoons, reefs, and grey seal abundance”. Expert-derived sensitivity scores are described further with the following: New line 178-186: “In total, 81 experts from 9 Baltic Sea countries contributed to the expert survey with pres-sures-vs.-ecosystem component sensitivity score inputs ranked on a scale of ‘high’/’medium’/’low’ sensitivity and converted to a numeric scale from 0.0 (low sensitiv-ity) to 2.0 (high sensitivity). The sensitivity scores were in this process checked for their expert-stated tolerance and recoverability scores to estimate a consistency level among the individual experts and checked for confidence level by considering the number of expert inputs per score and the variability among obtained responses [27]. The final input scores are listed in table 8 in HELCOM (2017) [27].” Secondly, an additional paper on MYTILUS is now referenced to improve the description of the MYTILUS design process: Hansen & Bonnevie (2020) [25]. Thirdly, a new, additional figure 1 has been created and added which shows the MYTILUS interface including a summary of the MYTILUS functionality, separated out on different MYTILUS versions: New line 160-162: “The presented MYTILUS functionality is visualised in figure 1, separated out on whether it was introduced in older MYTILUS versions or in the current version.”

 

• Reviewer 2 comment 2: “For Figure 4 you could consider to use a ranking of values that allows you to better highlight the differences between the two scenarios. I suggest this since I noticed this ranking is not the same as Figure 2A so you don’t have the need to keep it as it is.”
  • To reviewer 2 on comment 2:
    • The reason for the different classifications in Fig. 2A and Figure 4 is due to the maps/figures having different purposes. It is stated in the figure texts that Fig. 2A uses a quantile classification while figure 4 uses an equal classification. The quantile classification is good to highlight area-based differences; more specifically to show the 10 % area with lowest values, the 10 % area with next-lowest values etc. through the use of 10 intervals (100 % area / 10 intervals = 10 % area per interval). However, the quantile classification cannot be used when comparing maps as the intervals will differ with the individual map value distributions. Thus, the equal classification is used instead in figure 4 for comparing the maps in figure 4. Since the equal classification is an automatic calculation built into the MYTILUS program, the classification cannot easily and justifiably be automatically manipulated to better show the differences between fig. 4A and fig. 4B. We do, however, view this comment as a good idea for further development options to implement in the MYTILUS program to allow the user in a future MYTILUS version to manually and interactively change the color scale to explore the differences between the fig. 4A and fig. 4B maps better.  

 

• Reviewer 2 comment 3: “Considering students’ feedback, I think seven feedback are quite few. Can you provide info on how many students participated in the course in total? Can you shortly discuss about the number of respondent?”
  • Old line 205: “Written feedback was received from 7 of the PhD students that participated in the course.”
• To reviewer 2 on comment 3:
  • It is now clarified to be seven PhD students that followed the course and thus a 100 % response rate: New line 242-250: “Written feedback was received from the seven PhD students that participated in the course. The PhD course was initially intended to be a physical course, which was an-nounced almost a year before through the Knowledge Flows in MSP network and through a webpage listing all officially announced PhD courses in Denmark (https://phdcourses.dk/). Due to the COVID-pandemic, the course was postponed several times, and finally transformed into the digital setting and announced as an online course. Seven is quite a few respondents, though, the relatively low number of participants might be related to the field of MSP being new and upcoming compared to coastal and terrestrial spatial planning [32], but also to the fact, that the topics of the course are quite technical.” Seven is indeed quite a few respondents. The above points mention this, and it is also touched upon in the Discussions: New line 325-329: “Despite the number of respondents being low, the written feedback from the PhD students provides valuable insights into the strengths and challenges regarding how to utilise the MYTILUS tool as an advanced decision support tool in the MSP processes for enabling capacity building and mutual learning within the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary MSP community, drawing on an active learning setting.” Additionally, it is now recommended in the Conclusions to further test the material with more respondents in the future: New line 461-463: “Future research with testing of the training material among more respondents could advantageously provide further inputs to support these first impressions of applying MYTILUS in an online active learning environment.”

 

• Reviewer 2 comment 4: “I would suggest you to summarize the findings from the feedback in a table or a diagram point out the strengths and weaknesses identified.”
  • To reviewer 2 on comment 4:
    • Instead of a suggested table/diagram, we now include in the Conclusions a bullet point list with recommendations for spatial DST training material guidelines that are based on the discussion of strengths and weaknesses. The strengths and weaknesses are in fact already summed up – not in a table – but in the text in the Conclusions, and to highlight this, the summary of strengths is now separated into its own paragraph in the Conclusions, and the summary of challenges also separated into its own paragraph in the Conclusions. The bullet point list goes the following: New line 492-505: “Based on the insights of this paper, some recommendations for developing spatial DSTs training material are the following: - Make a strong use of visuals such as maps and statistics, make use of fast calculations, and amplify user-friendly aspects of the tool interface. - Consider the learning flow where inputs are explored before spatial outputs, and spatial outputs are linked to more detailed sub-statistics, and where the tasks build on top of each other in a systematic way. - Combine multiple tool approaches to support an integrative tool setup. - Enable time and technical setups for engaging with the material alone and as part of cross-student online discussions, especially for complicated tasks, to enable students to actively find strengths and limitations of the approaches and data. - Allow for user inputs to the data and for students to link the material to their own research.”

 

• Reviewer 2 comment 5: “It would be interesting to know if you plan to make Mytilus available for other users, within a community of practice or even publicly available. You might want to mention your perspective on this point in the conclusions.”
  • To reviewer 2 on comment 5:
    • As already stated in the paper, new line 135-136: MYTILUS is “freeware with full accessibility to the source code”. The Data Availability Statement (new line 536-538) is now updated to the following: “We plan to soon create a webpage to make the MYTILUS software available for download. Meanwhile, a copy of the MYTILUS software can be acquired by contacting Professor Henning Sten Hansen at Aalborg University Copenhagen: hsh@plan.aau.dk.”

Reviewer 3 Report

Would like to congratulate authors for interesting study and well written manuscript.

Quite interesting topic on how research work and development of the specialized decision support  tool can be applied trough on-line learning courses for the academic studies. Moreover, paper discuss Mytilus tool potential to be applied within the Maritime Spatial Planning Process, providing capacity building and understanding of sophisticated tool to  planners.

The strength of this paper are results of the workshop and capacity building that was delivered with academic students, to test and understand potential of the applied method, that maybe in future can be applied with national planners and policy makers within the MSP process.

The Mytilus decision support tool is well explained and mauscript properly reference work delivered by Hansen 2019. Authors can consider to briefly explain, how were defined pressures, ecosystem components and particularly ecosystem-pressure sensitivity score.

Author Response

To reviewer 3

• Reviewer 3 comment 1: “Would like to congratulate authors for interesting study and well written manuscript. Quite interesting topic on how research work and development of the specialized decision support tool can be applied trough on-line learning courses for the academic studies. Moreover, paper discuss Mytilus tool potential to be applied within the Maritime Spatial Planning Process, providing capacity building and understanding of sophisticated tool to planners. The strength of this paper are results of the workshop and capacity building that was delivered with academic students, to test and understand potential of the applied method, that maybe in future can be applied with national planners and policy makers within the MSP process. The Mytilus decision support tool is well explained and manuscript properly reference work delivered by Hansen 2019. Authors can consider to briefly explain, how were defined pressures, ecosystem components and particularly ecosystem-pressure sensitivity score.”
  • To reviewer 3 on comment 1:
    • We would like to thank you for your highlights of the strengths of this paper. To address the request to briefly explain pressures, ecosystem components and particularly ecosystem-pressure sensitivity score, more details are now included about human activities, pressures, ecosystem components and expert-derived sensitivity scores. More specifically, human activities are exemplified with the following: New line 153-154: “options for co-locating some activities, for example, offshore windfarms and aquaculture”. Pressures are exemplified with the following: New line 174-175: “pressures such as, for example, physical disturbance, inputs of phosphorous, and extraction of cod”. Ecosystem components are exemplified with the following: New line 176-177: “ecosystem components such as, for example, coastal lagoons, reefs, and grey seal abundance”. Expert-derived sensitivity scores are described further with the following: New line 178-186: “In total, 81 experts from 9 Baltic Sea countries contributed to the expert survey with pres-sures-vs.-ecosystem component sensitivity score inputs ranked on a scale of ‘high’/’medium’/’low’ sensitivity and converted to a numeric scale from 0.0 (low sensitiv-ity) to 2.0 (high sensitivity). The sensitivity scores were in this process checked for their expert-stated tolerance and recoverability scores to estimate a consistency level among the individual experts and checked for confidence level by considering the number of expert inputs per score and the variability among obtained responses [27]. The final input scores are listed in table 8 in HELCOM (2017) [27].” Furthermore, an additional paper on MYTILUS is now referenced to improve the description of the MYTILUS design process: Hansen & Bonnevie (2020) [25].

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for submitting your manuscript. This manuscript has potential to publish, however, a revisit is needed before considering for publication. Please see below the comments.

(a)The first paragraph of Section 1 needs to be further analyzed, highlighting the importance of coastal and marine areas, the conflicts that occur, etc., in order to place more emphasis on the need for  MSP. You can built on:

1. Ehler, C. and Douvere, F., 2009. Marine spatial planning: a step-by-step approach toward ecosystem-based management, intergovernmental oceanographic commission and man and the biosphere programme. IOC manual and guides, No 53, ICAM Dossier, No 6. Paris: UNESCO.

2. Douvere, F., 2008. The importance of marine spatial planning in advancing ecosystem-based sea use management. Marine Policy, 32, 762–771. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2008.03.021

3. Rempis and Tsilimigkas (2021) Marine spatial planning on Crete Island, Greece: methodological and implementation issues. Journal of Spatial Science. https://doi.org/10.1080/14498596.2021.1955025.

4. Kyriazi, Z., 2018. From identification of compatibilities and conflicts to reaching marine spatial allocation agreements. Review of actions required and relevant tools and processes. Ocean & Coastal Management, 166, 103–112. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2018.03.018.

(b) In Section 1 (lines 51-65) a revisit is needed in order to highlight the importance of participatory planning in decision making procedures. You can build on:

1. Stratigea, A., Kikidou, M., Patelida, M., Somarakis, G., 2018. Engaging citizens in planning open public space regeneration: pedio Agora framework. J. Urban Plan. Dev. 144 (1), 05017016.

2. Stratigea, A., Somarakis, G., Panagiotopoulou, M., 2017. Smartening-up communities in less-privileged urban areas—the DemoCU participatory cultural planning experience in Korydallos—Greece municipality. In: Stratigea, A. (Ed.), Smart Cities in the Mediterranean, Progress in IS, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54558-5_4.

2. Rempis, N., Alexandrakis, G., Tsilimigkas, G. and Kampanis, N. (2018) Coastal use synergies and conflicts evaluation in the framework of spatial, development and sectoral policies. Journal Ocean & Coastal Management, 166, 40–51.

(c) Μany sentences need a typical revision as they confuse the reader. For example, line 98-99 finishes with ‘…developed by [19]’. I believe that it should be replaced by ‘… developed by Halpern et al. (2008)’. The same is observed in lines 86, 89, 102, 125, etc.

Author Response

To reviewer 4

• Reviewer 4 comment 1: “The first paragraph of section 1 needs to be further analyzed, highlighting the importance of coastal and marine areas, the conflicts that occur, etc. in order to place more emphasis on the need for MSP – you can built on 1] Ehler, C., and Douvere, F. 2009 Marine Spatial Planning: a step-by-step approach towards ecosystem-based management, intergovernmental oceanographic commission… 2) Douvere, F. 2008 The importance of marine spatial planning in advancing ecosystem-based sea use management, Marine Policy…. 3) Rempis and Tsimiligkas 2021 Marine spatial planning on Crete island, Greece, methodological and implementation issues, Journal of spatial science…. 4) Kyriazi 2018 From identification of compatibilities and conflicts to reaching marine spatial allocation agreements…”
  • To reviewer 4 on comment 1:
    • We have now attempted to highlight better in the first section: why MSP is important and what challenges MSP phases. We have done this by including more details from existing references as well as adding the reviewer-suggested references of Kyriazi (2008) [2] and Ehler & Douvere (2009) [6] as well as added the new reference of Santos et al. (2020) [1]. The rephrased part of the first section is the following: New line 30-43: “The competition for marine space and the pressures on our ecosystems at sea are in-creasing, due to rapidly expanding ocean activities and climate change dynamics [1]. Marine and coastal areas become more industrialised and crowded with growing sectors such as renewable energy [2]. Climate change impacts the intensities and locations of future human activities, causes increasing conflicts due to its effects on marine ecosystem services but also increases the need for adaptive management and planning at sea for conflicts solving between human activities [2], for ecological conservation, and for climate mitigation and adaptation [1]. Around the globe, marine spatial planning (MSP) has evolved within the last two decades as a new framework to plan our seas in holistic, integrative ways [3], facing multiple challenges including not only climate change and eco-logical degradation but also transboundary, cross-country, stakeholder, and institutional integration challenges [4; 5]. MSP is per definition an adaptive, cross-sectoral process which includes ecological, social, and economic objectives, stakeholder interests, and political and legal processes [6].”

 

• Reviewer 4 comment 2: “In section 1 (line 51-66) a revisit is needed in order to highlight the importance of participatory planning in decision making procedures. You can build on 1) Stratigea, A., Kikidou, M., …. 2018 Engaging citizens in planning open public space regeneration: pedio agora framework, Urban Plan. Dev. 144(1) 2) Stratigea, A., Somarakis, G., Pana… 2017 Smartening-up communities in less-privileged urban areas – the DemoCU participatory cultural planning experience in Korydallos – Greece municipality. In Stratigea (ed.) Smart cities in the Mediterranean 3) Rempis, N., Alexandrakis, G. … 2018 Coastal use synergies and conflicts evaluation in the framework of spatial, development and sectoral policies. Journal Ocean & Coastal Management 166”
  • Old line 51-66: “To balance the many different interests at stake in MSP and find shared goals for the spatial plan, successful stakeholder inclusion is essential [8]. The MSPD does not setup any requirements regarding how to include stakeholders but highlights the need to select and include relevant stakeholders early in the MSP process [3]. The questions of who, why, how, and when to include different people remain highly important for any MSP process [9]. Spatial decision support tools (DSTs) are useful to utilize existing knowledge by presenting it on maps and to facilitate discussions among stakeholders in online and/or physical workshop settings. Spatial DSTs can enable politicians, planners, and stakeholders to present and discuss different evidence and planning scenarios with different environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural synergy-conflict outcomes of relevance for MSP processes [10]. Whether they are used in MSP, depend on these tools to be easily accessible, easily understandable, and not too resource demanding [11]. A comprehensive survey in the Baltic Sea region highlights the need among MSP practitioners for improved user guidelines and online training on how to use spatial DSTs [12]. With online tutorials and webinars, more users are likely to use the tools [13].”
• To reviewer 4 on comment 2:
  • We have now attempted to better highlight the importance of stakeholder inclusion by listing benefits from successful stakeholder inclusion: New line 66-70: “Benefits from including stakeholders in MSP consist, for example, of reaching support for MSP outcomes among sectors and locals, increasing stakeholder feelings of fairness and empowerment, finding shared goals and synergies in solutions, mobilising local, place-based, and qualitative knowledge, and facilitating transparency of MSP processes [2, 13, 14].” The suggested papers have not been added as references, as they relate more to urban than marine planning. Marine spatial planning stakeholder inclusion is of course inspired from stakeholder inclusion in urban planning, but since a lot of papers engage directly with marine spatial planning stakeholder inclusion, such references that engage directly with stakeholder inclusion in MSP are added instead: Kyriazi (2018) [2] and Gee et al. (2017) [14].

 

• Reviewer 4 comment 3: “Many sequences need a typical revision as they confuse the reader. For example, line 98-99 finishes with “… developed by [19].” I believe that should be replaced by “… developed by Halpern et al. [2008]”. The same is observed in line 86, 89, 125, etc.”
  • To reviewer 4 on comment 3:
    • The reference format is based on numbers, thus, the number references cannot be leftout. To ease the reading of the paper, we have decided to add to the number references author names and year for all places in the paper where active referencing of papers take place:
      • New line 100, 386, 387: Pınarbaşı et al. (2017) [15]
      • New line 103, 330-331, 332-333: Schumacher et al. (2020) [17]
      • New line 114, 117: Halpern et al. (2008) [24]
      • New line 117-118, 127-128, 140, 165-166: Hansen (2019) [21]
      • New line 141, 159-160, 166-167: Hansen & Bonnevie (2020) [25]
      • New line 173, 185-186: HELCOM (2017) [27]
      • New line 218: Bonnevie et al. (2020) [29]
      • New line 364: Bagstad et al. (2013) [34]
      • New line 450-451: Koski et al. (2021) [16]