Environmental Assessment for Sustainable Educational Spaces: Optimizing Classroom Proportions in Taif City, KSA

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper deals with the impact of internal/external wall ratio on indoor environmental quality in rectangular classrooms.

Although the paper covers a very interesting topic, I believe it has several problems.

1 - The structure of the paper should be improved. The various parts of the paper are not properly divided. In details the current section 3,4 and 6 are materials and should be included in the Section 2 "Material and Method" with a division into subsections.
The same for the Results section; the current section 7,8, and 10 are all results and should be included in a whole section "Results" divided into several subsection.
Discussion and conclusions should be placed at the end of the paper.

2- In the Method section a flow chart of the activity carried out should be added and in the description of the research the administration of the questionnaire should be included. In this part is important to provide a clear framework of the proposed activity and of the content of the paper.

3- The current Section 4 should be fully revised. It appears not fully adherent with the paper and some specific ones should be added. More in details: the environmental factors selected for the evaluation of IEQ should be better introduced. 
Concerning visual comfort many different aspects are involved in the perception of this environmental factor (see for example 10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.106501), however it is not wrong to choose some performance indicators that are more significant for the particular type of environment analyzed. I therefore suggest providing a broader picture of the aspects that influence visual comfort and then clarifying the chosen indicators in greater detail. For example, instead of brightness it would be appropriate to define some visual tasks (commonly the main visual tasks of the occupants) and for these discuss the illuminance and/or luminance. More than an aspect/factor/criterion of visual comfort, glare avoidance is an indicator of the presence of systems for shielding direct solar radiation and discomfort glare due to the reflection of strongly illuminated surfaces with high reflection coefficients; I suggest to describe glare more in general.
The light colour temperature is described only in relation to the potential effects on circadian rhythms, but colour temperature not only influence the circadian rhythms and the circadian rhythms are influenced only by the colour temperature. They are influence by also other parameters such as the vertical illuminance at the eye level.
Regarding Thermal comfort it should be stated that the use of Comprehensive indicators allows to simplify the evaluation and the PMV and PPD indicators should be introduced.
Regarding acoustic comfort it is important to separate the aspects of sound insulation of walls that protect occupants from external and adjacent environments (that concern the protection from unwanted noise emitted in outside environment), and the sound absorption that concerns the treatment of the internal surface and the propagation of the sound emitted in the analysed environment. If on one hand the sound insulation is the major responsible of background noise, the reverberation time and the Speech transmission index (STI) are more influenced by the treatment of the internal surfaces and their reflection coefficient. Please better explain this part of the paper.

Some of the aspect treated in the current Section 5 are not introduced in the current Section 4. For example, the "natural light properties" or in other words the WWR and the daylight factor should be introduced in the section 4.

4- The models used for the evaluation of Thermal comfort, visual comfort and acoustic comfort should be validated by comparison in at least one real case. Without a model validation the obtained results cannot be considered fully reliable and therefore the research cannot be considered sufficiently robust.

5- More information on the subjective investigation should be added, including the format of the questionnaires, the type of questions (for example: close/open ended questions, Likert scale, etc.) the selection criteria of the respondents, if the participation of the questionnaire was free, the response rate obtained.

6 - The Introduction should be improved. The topic of indoor environmental quality in classrooms is widely studied, and more information about holistic and comprehensive evaluations, that represent a core topic of the paper, should be added. For example, information about the use weighting schemes for complete evaluation (doi: 10.1016/j.enbenv.2023.12.004) and about IEQ performance indicators (doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.09.014) should be added.

7 - Where references are cited, please use the style [3-5,9] instead of [3][4][5][9].

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for reviewing my manuscript and for providing thoughtful and constructive feedback. I sincerely appreciate the time and effort you have taken to evaluate my work and offer suggestions for improvement.

I have carefully addressed all the points you raised in your review. Please see the attachment for a detailed point-by-point response to your comments, along with the revised manuscript that incorporates the necessary changes.

Your insights have been invaluable in strengthening the manuscript, and I am grateful for your guidance. I hope the revisions meet your expectations, and I look forward to your feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors propose an investigation on Environmental Assessment of External to Internal Wall
Ratio 2 for Rectangular Classrooms in Taif City, KSA. In their proposal, rectangular classrooms in
Taif City, KSA were analyzed to find the effect of their external/internal walls on their indoor
environmental quality functions and its related effect on users. It is considered to be published
with the following suggestions:
(a)Modify the abstract in the methodology describe that 8 case studies were analyzed detailing
the variants of each case.
b) Add in the reference the types of illumination or illumination systems as they affect the learning
conditions.
c) Add in the reference the types of ventilation or related to the variants of windows .
d) Modify Table1. Eight KSA schools prototype plans with determination boxes around the
classrooms to 166 notice their common proportion. Source: Ministry of Education with better
quality images.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for reviewing my manuscript and for providing thoughtful and constructive feedback. I sincerely appreciate the time and effort you have taken to evaluate my work and offer suggestions for improvement.

I have carefully addressed all the points you raised in your review. Please see the attachment for a detailed point-by-point response to your comments, along with the revised manuscript that incorporates the necessary changes.

Your insights have been invaluable in strengthening the manuscript, and I am grateful for your guidance. I hope the revisions meet your expectations, and I look forward to your feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper looks at the impact of room proportions on learning in Taif City, KSA. While this study is well documented and the methods are appropriate, several significant limitations exist. First, it is not clear how the authors are contextualizing this work. The background and introduction vacillate between claims about the universal impact of spatial configuration on micro-environment conditions and well-being that suggest the findings would apply to any locale. As environmental conditions vary worldwide, what may work in one location will not work in another. Second, if the study is focused on KSA, the authors need to add the broader impact and intellectual merit for the study. How is this research applicable in other locations? What differences or attributes can be extrapolated and applied to different educational models? For instance, learning modalities and the spatial layouts supporting them in many educational systems are not organized in the traditional "scholar on a box" model suggested by the plan shown in Figure 1. For this study to be impactful, it needs to identify or address the limitations and situate the results to be relevant to a wide audience. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for reviewing my manuscript and for providing thoughtful and constructive feedback. I sincerely appreciate the time and effort you have taken to evaluate my work and offer suggestions for improvement.

I have carefully addressed all the points you raised in your review. Please see the attachment for a detailed point-by-point response to your comments, along with the revised manuscript that incorporates the necessary changes.

Your insights have been invaluable in strengthening the manuscript, and I am grateful for your guidance. I hope the revisions meet your expectations, and I look forward to your feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I really appreciate the authors' effort to accommodate all my suggestions. I think that in its current form the document is much clearer and more robust. In my opinion the article is now ready for publication.

The only thing I would like to point out is that some references should be checked. For example in ref. 17 the authors' names and surnames are reversed.