Is “Attending Nearby School” Near? An Analysis of Travel-to-School Distances of Primary Students in Beijing Using Smart Card Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

• This paper investigated the spatial characteristics of commuting distance to primary schools by public transport and the residence-school spatial pattern in Beijing using student-type smart card data (SCD). It's good to use SCD to get an overall picture of the city. This paper provides insights into particular spatial characteristics regarding the commuting distance of primary students in Beijing. However, several revisions are required prior to publication. Consider the comments summarized below.
• What are the main objectives of this study? The goals need to be more clearly presented.
• The manuscript should be better organized to present a more scientific and less reporting structure. This reviewer suggests that the authors make a chapter of methodology that also contains the description of the study area.
• The authors should revise English throughout the manuscript. Below are several examples of English errors this reviewer found.
• Using contractions in academic writing is usually not encouraged.
• 'Enrolment' in Introduction should be 'enrollment.'
• 'Analysis' should be 'analyze' on the 84th line, page 2.
• 'Comply' should be 'comply with' on the 92nd line, page 2.
• 'School,' should be 'school.' It is a period, not a comma on the 180th line, page 4.
• 'Exist' should be 'existing' on the 191st line, page 5.
• What do you mean by 'big data?' The meaning of big data is ambiguous.
• Regarding line 165, do elementary school students in Beijing go to school three days a week?
• First, the 'near' distance was set to 0.37 km, but the evidence is weak.
• Regarding the first near distance of 0.37km, the authors used the Euclidean distance. However, the distance traveled to school is different from the Euclidean distance. It is more realistic to use the Manhattan distance.
• The authors found that 96% of students using public transport did not go to the nearest school. Where did 96% come from?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In general, the paper is well structured and interesting with the proven research gap.

 

The methodology would be more clear if the Authors present it as a figure.

 

Figure 3 is way too small - it is almost not possible to investigate the legends of the presented maps.

 

It would be useful to enrich the article with relevant hypotheses and goodness-of-fir tests.

 

Section 4 should discuss the results, therefore the literature which is mentioned there should be included in the section of the literature review.

 

Future results might be analyzed with a periodical prognosis of simulation tools, as what-if analyses of the various variants of the analyzed situations within the research. For such simulation tools, the Author may check e.g.

Kostrzewski, M. Sensitivity Analysis of Selected Parameters in the Order Picking Process Simulation Model, with Randomly Generated Orders. Entropy 2020, 22, is. 4, 423, pp. 1-21.  https://doi.org/10.3390/e22040423

Gibson, R.R. 5 - Planning and plant layout. In: Plant Engineer's Reference; D.A. Snow, ed.; 2nd edition; Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002, 5-1-5-18, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-075064452-5/50060-2.

Capocchi, L.; Santucci, J.-F. Discrete Event Modeling and Simulation for Reinforcement Learning System Design. Information 2022, 13, 121. https://doi.org/10.3390/info13030121

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

(1) First of all, this research is novel which reveals a social phenomenon. This research adopts the advanced technique collect the data and analyze the reason and meaning of this phenomenon. However, there is little relation between this research and sustainability. Therefore, the authors should pay more attention to this point.

(2) Please confirm the style of references again.

(3) “Very few studies have used geo-big data to analysis the characteristics of school commuting behavior of basic education student group”. “Both papers didn’t set their studies on the background of educational policy or equity”. I don’t think these are innovation in academic viewpoints, so the authors need describe the creative points of this research.

(4) line 133 of page 4, the sample of each record contains 7 attributes listed in Table 1, but there are 6 attributes in Table1 of line 137. And what’s the meaning of Card type 18? What are the other card types?

(5) Please show the typical spatial data of housing price/age.

(6) line 180 of page 4, “stations to schools will be used to identify the residence and the school, Following the...”, Please check it.

(7) How to convert house price and age data to the raster data? Please describe it.

(8) Using the Jenks method in ArcGIS, the density values are divided into five grades. Why select the Jenks method in ArcGIS?

(9) I think the Discussion and Conclusions should be separated, and the conclusions should be concluded again.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors have included most of my remarks, therefore the manuscript can be accepted for publication.