An Investigation to Identify the Effectiveness of Socioeconomic, Demographic, and Buildings’ Characteristics on Surface Urban Heat Island Patterns
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for inviting me to evaluate the article titled "An investigation to identify the effectiveness of socioeconomic, demographic, and buildings’ characteristics on Surface Urban Heat Island patterns “. This is an interesting and considerate study, it investigates the spatial patterns in Surface Urban Heat Island over the study site and develops its relationships to socioeconomic, demographic, and buildings’ characteristics.
In this paper, There are many important factors to influence the SUHI, I suggest to discuss these factors in the conclusion and tell author how to reduce SUHI through adjust these factors, which can be more useful and worth referring to us.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper aims at exploring the impact of socioeconomic, demographic, and building characteristics on the spatial pattern of SUHI in the city of Greater Geelong, Australia. Despite the research topic is of interest, this Reviewer cannot support the publication of the manuscript as it is, but a major revision is needed to improve the content of the research. More in detail, this reviewer thinks that limitations of the proposed methodologies need to be pointed out such as the possible affection of specific researchers’ choices on the obtained results. In particular:
- LST seems retrieved just from one single Landsat picture that refers to 8th January 2021. The authors justify the selection of this specific day as the least cloud-covered in the hottest month of summer 2021 in Australia. However, since the research aim is to assess the contribution of many urban factors on the spatial pattern of SUHI, it seems a limit to just focus on one-single day
- LULC and socioeconomic data are referring to 2016. Since the authors stated that the study area “is one of the fastest-growing regional cities in Australia”, is it reliable to correlate these information with the LST given by a 2021 satellite imagery? A pre-process step verifying the occurred changes is suggested, or at least to refer to 2016 LST data seems more appropriate.
- It is not clear to this reviewer the statement at the end of section 3.3.3: “Therefore, the SUHI is downscaled at a building scale”. How did you downscale the SUHI?
More comments are provided directly in the body of the manuscript, attached.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript has been revised and its quality is improved. Nevertheless, there are still some points that need to be clarified before being published:
- line 116. This sentence about the reduced sensible heat flux of asphalted surfaces cannot be accepted. I suggest deleting the whole addition in red
- line 436. Double check the content, some words are “split” with no reason why (e.g. vari-ance, confi-dance)
- line 476. Consider revising this sentence, below a suggestion
“It may require the town planners and policymakers to put more money invest more to make the suburbs greener or environmentally sustainable, which may lead to higher while lowering prices of living the building stock and unaffordable lifestyles for lower-income areas thus avoiding the displacement of current inhabitants.”
- line 524. Provided explanations are still not convincing. Trying to explain the positive correlation between building age and SUHI involving the rising density is not in line with the results directly related to the building density that seem to not be related to SUHI (p-value higher than 0.01). Another option could be that newer constructions are associated to an extension in space of the infrastructure. I don’t know what’s the real explanation behind presented results, but the one provided by the authors sounds weak.
- line 597. In line with previous comment “higher building density” seems not to be correlated to the SUHI rise (according to your model) so I suggest not to mention it.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
