Cesspits as Onsite Sanitation Facilities in the Non-Sewered Palestinian Rural Areas: Users’ Satisfaction, Needs and Perception

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The document presented is more of a report than a scientific document that gathers a deep investigation and with an adequate methodology. There are two main limitations: 1.- The research carried out is nothing more than a small market study. The objective is very limited, the methodology used is very basic (questions from a questionnaire analyzed through percentages). Therefore, the conclusions are very basic, not relevant and their international scope does not exist. No contribution is made either to the academic field (increase the existing literature) or to the management field (practical implications). 2.- The document does not meet the standards of a scientific article: - Abstract: must be rewritten. It must contain, contextualization of the subject, objective clearly (if relevant), methodology and the main conclusions. - Introduction: in this section the subject under study must be presented, the relevant scientific literature must be analyzed to find out what has been done and what gap is identified in order to propose the research. What is the novelty of the study. Finish by including a paragraph in which the sections into which the document is divided are collected. - Literature Review Section: a thorough review of the literature on the subject must be carried out. - Methodology: this should be clearly exposed all relevant aspects. This is very basic and insufficient. etc.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are gratitude for your highly valuable comments on our manuscript “Cesspits as onsite sanitation facilities in the non-sewered Palestinian rural areas: users’ satisfaction, needs and perception” that helped us improving its quality. All our new changes to the manuscript are inserted with track changes.

 

Comment:

The document presented is more of a report than a scientific document that gathers a deep investigation and with an adequate methodology. There are two main limitations: 1. The research carried out is nothing more than a small market study. The objective is very limited, the methodology used is very basic (questions from a questionnaire analyzed through percentages). Therefore, the conclusions are very basic, not relevant and their international scope does not exist. No contribution is made either to the academic field (increase the existing literature) or to the management field (practical implications).

2. The document does not meet the standards of a scientific article: - Abstract: must be rewritten. It must contain contextualization of the subject, objective clearly (if relevant), methodology and the main conclusions. - Introduction: in this section the subject under study must be presented, the relevant scientific literature must be analyzed to find out what has been done and what gap is identified in order to propose the research. What is the novelty of the study? Finish by including a paragraph in which the sections into which the document is divided are collected. - Literature Review Section: a thorough review of the literature on the subject must be carried out. - Methodology: this should be clearly exposed all relevant aspects. This is very basic and insufficient. etc.

 

Response:

We have considered all your comments in the here re submitted version; we have re –written many sections. Nine new references have been included to increase and clarify the relevance of our work to practice and literature, especially in the introduction section. The methodology has been elaborated, and the whole text as well.

 

The objectives have been elaborated, and justification for the value of including the society in the study gives more practical and scientific relevance.

 

This paper comes from Palestine, with a dominant Muslims population; this adds  to the available literature about the accepted sanitation systems, and the effluent reuse of treated effluent. Also, it helps decision and policy makers better understand the people perception about the accepted sanitation system, i.e. onsite versus off site. Also, though cesspit and pit latrine are primitive system, they are the most used systems in the developing countries.

 

 

Best regards

 

Reviewer 2 Report

+ The authors focus their study on introducing a research analysis in order to assess the problems of using cesspits in non-sewered areas such as the West Bank of Palestine.

+ The authors have collected data from the cesspits users and they have analyzed them in order to get insightful information to design a more technically sound individual home onside wastewater management system.

+ The manuscript is overall well written and easy to follow and the authors have well thought out their main contributions.

+ The provided theoretical analysis of the data collection is detailed and the authors have presented also in a thorough manner their main observations.

The authors should consider the following suggestions provided by the reviewer in order to improve the scientific depth of their manuscript, as well as they should address the following comments in order to improve the quality of presentation of their manuscript.

- Initially in Section 1, the authors should discuss how the Internet of Things technology can contribute in solving the examined problem, such as Grieco, Luigi Alfredo, et al., eds. Ad-Hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks: 19th International Conference on Ad-Hoc Networks and Wireless, ADHOC-NOW 2020, Bari, Italy, October 19-21, 2020, Proceedings. Vol. 12338. Springer Nature, 2020, where several sensing nodes can collect data from the examined water system.

- In Section 2, the authors should include a block diagram providing a depiction of the methodology that has been followed in order to collect and analyze the data.

- In Section 3, the authors should use some pie diagrams in order to present their main observations from the data analysis as it has been already done in some of the indicative figures that have been included.

- The authors should elaborate more on the discussion of the numerical evaluation.

- Finally, the overall manuscript should be checked for typos, syntax, and grammar errors in order to improve the quality of its presentation.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are gratitude for your highly valuable comments on our manuscript “Cesspits as onsite sanitation facilities in the non-sewered Palestinian rural areas: users’ satisfaction, needs and perception” that helped us to improve the scientific depth and the quality of presentation of our manuscript. All our new changes to the manuscript are inserted with track changes.

We have addressed the reviewer’s specific comments in the resubmitted modified version of our manuscript. A summary of the reviewer’s specific comments and our responses are provided in the hereafter table.

Response to the specific comments of the reviewer

Comment	response
- Initially in Section 1, the authors should discuss how the Internet of Things technology can contribute in solving the examined problem, where several sensing nodes can collect data from the examined water system.	Done; the IoT has been added to the introduction, and a reference has been made to Grieco et al., with the number 28: Grieco, L. A.; Boggia, G.; Piro, G.; Jararweh, Y.; Campolo, C., eds. Ad-Hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks: 19th International Conference on Ad-Hoc Networks and Wireless, ADHOC-NOW 2020, Bari, Italy, October 19-21, 2020, Proceedings. Vol. 12338. Springer Nature, 2020,
- In Section 2, the authors should include a block diagram providing a depiction of the methodology that has been followed in order to collect and analyze the data.	Done; please see Figure 3.
- In Section 3, the authors should use some pie diagrams in order to present their main observations from the data analysis as it has been already done in some of the indicative figures that have been included.	Table 5 has been replaced with a pie diagram (Figure 8).
- The authors should elaborate more on the discussion of the numerical evaluation.	Done; as far as possible, the discussion has been improved, everywhere in the manuscript.
- Finally, the overall manuscript should be checked for typos, syntax, and grammar errors in order to improve the quality of its presentation.	The whole manuscript has been subjected to a thorough revision.

 

Best regards

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The main aim of this research was to assess the problems of using cesspits in the non- 12 sewered areas in the West Bank of Palestine by the means of a questionnaire, with a sample size of 13 485 households, targeting the cesspits’ owners. Most of the cesspits users were not satisfied with the 14 cesspits. For people who still use cesspits, 75.7 % of the interviewees complained from high disturb- 15 ance and intensive odour emission when emptying the cesspits once become full. The average num- 16 ber of emptying the cesspit per year was 6.9 that cost them 6% of their monthly income. The majority 17 of people (74.8%) preferred sewerage networks for wastewater management, 15.5% preferred onsite 18 grey water treatment plants (GWTPs), and 9.5% preferred cesspits. The financial aspects and afford- 19 ability were significant issues for construction of onsite GWTPs in the Palestinian rural communi- 20 ties, to replace cesspits. Therefore, a more technically sound individual home onsite wastewater 21 management system should be applied to replace cesspits so as to solve their negative implications 22 on the socio-economic, environmental and health aspects in the Palestinian rural communities.

The paper is interesting and the manuscript is well written. I recommend the publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are gratitude for your highly valuable comments on our manuscript “Cesspits as onsite sanitation facilities in the non-sewered Palestinian rural areas: users’ satisfaction, needs and perception” that helped us to improve the scientific depth and the quality of presentation of our manuscript. All our new changes to the manuscript are inserted with track changes.

We have addressed the reviewer’s specific comments in the resubmitted modified version of our manuscript. A summary of the reviewer’s specific comments and our responses are provided in the hereafter table.

Response to the specific comments of the reviewer

Comment

response

The main aim of this research was to assess the problems of using cesspits in the non- 12 sewered areas in the West Bank of Palestine by the means of a questionnaire, with a sample size of 13 485 households, targeting the cesspits’ owners. Most of the cesspits users were not satisfied with the 14 cesspits. For people who still use cesspits, 75.7 % of the interviewees complained from high disturb- 15 ance and intensive odour emission when emptying the cesspits once become full. The average num- 16 ber of emptying the cesspit per year was 6.9 that cost them 6% of their monthly income. The majority 17 of people (74.8%) preferred sewerage networks for wastewater management, 15.5% preferred onsite 18 grey water treatment plants (GWTPs), and 9.5% preferred cesspits. The financial aspects and afford- 19 ability were significant issues for construction of onsite GWTPs in the Palestinian rural communi- 20 ties, to replace cesspits. Therefore, a more technically sound individual home onsite wastewater 21 management system should be applied to replace cesspits so as to solve their negative implications 22 on the socio-economic, environmental and health aspects in the Palestinian rural communities. The paper is interesting and the manuscript is well written. I recommend the publication.

Thank you very much.

 

Best regards

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made considerable effort. The document has improved considerably. Although I think that it still has important limitations that are difficult to solve, I also consider that the current state may be interesting for readers and, therefore, I accept the document in this form.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed the reviewers’ comments in detail. The quality of presentation of the paper, as well as its scientific depth, have been substantially improved. This reviewer has no concerns about this paper.