Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

All sections have been improved and the present form of the research is described much more clearly. The general quality of the manuscript is better in my opinion, easier to understand, and valuable for potential readers.

The only observation that I would like to make concerns the structure of some sentences in the new part of the results: the sentences from "Based on the sDA dynamic daylighting index, the area with sDA>300 lux during the winter ..." should be rephrased to improve the structure of the text and make concepts clearer.

 

 

 

 

 

English grammar and style should be enhanced in some parts of the document. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1Comments

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for your review and evaluation of our research paper. We are delighted to hear that you find the improvements we made to be valuable, making the manuscript clearer and easier to understand for potential readers.

 

We greatly appreciate your observation regarding the sentence structure in the new part of the results section. We fully understand your suggestion, and we will reorganize and improve the sentences starting from "Based on the sDA dynamic daylighting index, the area with sDA>300 lux during the winter..." to enhance the clarity of the text and improve the conceptual understanding. We would also like to inform you that we have already utilized MDPI's language editing service to ensure the quality and fluency of the paper.

 

Once again, we sincerely thank you for your valuable feedback and suggestions. We will carefully consider your proposed revisions and make the necessary improvements in the final version of the paper. If you have any further suggestions or comments, we would be more than happy to listen.

 

Thank you again for your valuable input.

 

Yours sincerely,

Hui Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

The authors did more work clarifying unclear information and tried to respond to my points. It is noticed that the difference among the design schemes is the opening size of the skylight roof, while the window size on the walls is fixed, causing the lighting conditions measured in locations C2, C3, C4, and C5 to be almost the same. The increase in skylight roof windows significantly improves lighting conditions compared to the base case scenario. So, this small change in design insufficiently provides new ideas or findings from this investigation. Why are the variations in the opening size on the wall not considered in this study?

 

The authors did not explain why the dynamic approach could better reflect the building's lighting performance than the static approach. In this study, do you have any comparison between static and dynamic conditions?

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2Comments

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for your review and evaluation of our research paper. We greatly appreciate your insights and thank you for pointing out some important issues.

 

Regarding the first issue, we would like to explain why the variation in wall opening sizes was not considered in this study. The focus of this paper is to showcase the advantages of a parametric daylighting evaluation method in large space daylighting design by comparing the initial design scheme with the optimized design scheme, and provide references for similar studies. In our initial design scheme, the C1 area had poor daylighting conditions, while the other areas had good daylighting quality. Therefore, we conducted parametric adjustments specifically for the C1 area. In the optimized scheme, we treated the skylight roof opening size as a variable while keeping the window size on the walls constant. This resulted in similar daylighting conditions measured at positions C2, C3, C4, and C5. Our goal was to identify the areas with problematic daylighting conditions and optimize them accordingly. However, we understand your point and will consider the combined variation of wall opening sizes and skylight in future research. The paper has been revised accordingly and marked.

 

Regarding the second issue, it is true that we did not explain in the paper why the dynamic method better reflects the daylighting performance of the building. In this study, we primarily focused on the application of the dynamic daylighting evaluation method and did not directly compare it with static methods. We recognize this and will add an explanation in the introduction section to clarify why we chose the dynamic method and provide relevant literature support regarding its advantages and applicability. The paper has been revised accordingly and marked.

 

Once again, thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions. We will carefully consider the questions you raised and make appropriate revisions and additions in the final version of the paper. If you have any further suggestions or feedback, we would be more than happy to hear them.

 

Thank you once again for your kind consideration.

 

Yours sincerely,

Hui Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Tha manuscript has improved and ready for publication

English is good

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for your evaluation of our manuscript. We greatly appreciate your positive feedback, acknowledging that the manuscript has improved and is now ready for publication.

 

We are grateful for the time and effort you dedicated to reviewing our work, and your assessment reinforces our confidence in the quality of our research. Your positive evaluation serves as a validation of our efforts to enhance the manuscript.

 

We would like to emphasize that in addition to considering your suggestions, we have also taken into account the recommendations provided by other reviewers. Furthermore, we have utilized the language editing service offered by MDPI to optimize the article.

 

We sincerely value your expert opinion and will carefully consider any additional suggestions or recommendations you may have before finalizing the manuscript for publication.

 

Once again, thank you for your positive evaluation and for recognizing the improvements made. We are excited about the prospect of sharing our research with the scientific community.

 

Best regards,

Hui Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

I accepted this hard work that giving more clarification and detailed data. 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is presenting an interesting study on evaluation and design of parameterized dynamic daylighting for large space buildings, which is demonstrated through a case study building in China. It is a complete work and timely research with extensive literature review and comprehensive analyses providing new contributions to the body of knowledge in the associated field.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have reviewed the paper “Evaluation and Design of Parameterized Dynamic Daylighting For Large Space Buildings”. This study evaluates the effectiveness of natural lighting in building design for creating a good lighting environment and saving energy. Therefore, the research topic is suitable for the Journal of Sustainability. The manuscript is well-written and highly detailed. However, I believe the research is missing validation, and the simulation tool's reliability is low compared to other validated tools. The structure of this study and the method used could be more suitable as a case study, so I recommend that the Authothers consider resubmitting this manuscript as a case study. Saying that, I accept the manuscript in its current form as a case study, but I reject it as a journal article.

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript conducted a dynamic daylighting performance simulation in a large space building, Hangzhou E-sports Center, in China. Two lighting indicators: Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA) and Useful Daylight Illuminance (UDI), were used to evaluate and compare the performance of initial and optimized schemes. The results provided the possibility of using dynamic daylighting indicators to evaluate the lighting in a large space and improve lighting quality in the design process. There are some comments that the authors should consider as follows:

1. Please clarify the information on the design characteristics of initial and optimized schemes. The building sections representing their locations and size or pictures of window openings could help the readers better understand. 
2. How the optimized scheme was from, and how optimize them? Only one design scheme is insufficient for approving that is the best solution. Any strategy or criteria used to propose the optimized scheme? Why was this design solution selected at the final?
3. It suggests presenting the validation results of the lighting simulation model using the parametric software Ladybug+Honeybee.
4. As mentioned in the introduction, the dynamic approach could better reflect the building's lighting performance than the static approach. In this study, do you have any comparison of their lighting performance?
5. In Table 4, what is the height level of floor height (in the Height of the daylight surface)?
6. The authors have to recheck the term of Fig 1 or Figure. It should be consistent.

Reviewer 4 Report

The work that is presented on dynamic daylight evaluation and large space buildings is interesting especially if we value that it has been carried out by comparing the initial and optimized design schemes. However, the manuscript suffers from a set of details that invite not to recommend its publication or in the best of cases suggest the authors re-elaborate the results obtained and integrate them into the tradition of natural lighting studies.
- Authors do not clearly describe the innovative aspect of their research. 
- Results and discussion could be written in a more compact and readable way. It is expected that results and their differences and alignments with previous studies are discussed. Authors should also give reasons for these similarities or disagreements, for the correlation between analyzed factors, and also for the major changes in different times and seasons on building lighting.
- Page 5, L187-194: The idea about parametric dynamic lighting evaluation and daylight intensity is not clear. Rewrite these sentences and elaborate on the idea.
- Page 7, L212-224: The performance design is not clear.  There are some grammatical errors throughout, please correct for grammar.