Potential of Computed Aided Facility Management for Urban Water Infrastructure with the Focus on Rainwater Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- The subject addressed is within the scope of the journal.

- The abstract could become much better if it properly introduces the study from a research standpoint. Also, the main findings could be stated more pointedly in the abstract.

- Page 8: the following paragraph is unclear, so please reorganize that:

“These simulations, as the label implies, are focused on the outdoor environment and the surroundings of buildings itself. Simulations of this type work usually with climatic conditions, traffic or the influence of the surroundings on buildings in general. Results can help us to determine the ideal layout, placement or choose the building purpose. External simulations coud be: Sunlight/shading, Air diffusion, Temperature, Movement of people, Transport, Statics, Acoustics, Fire and smoke, Floods.”.

- However, the manuscript, in its present form, contains several weaknesses. Appropriate revisions to the following points should be undertaken in order to justify recommendation for publication.

- It is suggested to add articles entitled “Mahmoud et al. Investigating the Impact of Changing the Usage Type of Existing Structure Using BIM” and “Albasri et al. Prediction of Urban Spatial Changes Pattern Using Markov Chain” to the literature review.

- Some key parameters are not mentioned. The rationale on the choice of the particular set of parameters should be explained with more details. Have the authors experimented with other sets of values? What are the sensitivities of these parameters on the results?

- Conclusion:

•The conclusion section is currently a repeat or rehash of the preceding sections, and  needs to be re-written to improve it, keeping in mind the following suggestions.

•Update the conclusion to include the newly formulated theoretical contributions

•Mention the limitations of the study and prospects for future research.

•Summarize the key results in a compact form and re-emphasize their significance.

•This conclusion could be worded in a manner as to emphatically motivate the academic community to get down to actionable, practical engaged scholarship.

Author Response

See attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript seems interesting and innovative, and with a high potential of application to solve city problems and challenges, but the text that is presented under "4 Optimization of Management and Maintenance of the Water Supply Infrastructure”, “4.2 Information Modeling in Public Space with a focus on Infrastructure", and "4.3 Strategy for Storm water Management in Urbanized Areas" is far for being enough complete and detailed.  It means that the title should be changed to express in a more clear way the content of the paper. In this sense, for example a title like "Potential of Computed Aided Facility Management for Optimizing Urban Water Infrastructures" or something similar would better fit.

 Along the text, the critical infrastructures or “life lines”, crucial for the city daily life, such as, in the water sector, water pipes, storage tanks, pumping installations, sewers, inlets and overflows, are disregarded.

Specific suggestions:

Keywords: Follow a alphabetic order:

 Lines 4-25 The abstract and content of the manuscript do not fit with the title– Title should change.

 Lines 51-52: The city has also infrastructures, equipment’s , such as pumps, valves, and sensors, with a lifetime spans of 20 years or even much less. This information should also be included in the text.

Lines 74-75 Include “resilience”

lines 355-356- “The model must be “cleaned-up” in various ways, ….. simplified and modified”- Please discuss in a few words strategies or methodologies to simplify and modify . 

Lines 455-457 – “Nevertheless, due to poor  operation and neglected care, there are partial or even complete restrictions in the systems for drinking water supply or drainage of waste water from the urbanized area.” The challenges are more complicated than simply operational issues, and involve lack of investments: aging assets caused by low rehabilitation rates, water losses in water pipes, unwanted inflows in sewer systems, pollution from overflows or frequent  flooding, may be caused by poor operation, but also by wrong technical options and low investments. This should be mentioned in the manuscript.

  Lines 473-474: “Remedial measures within the urbanized area can be found in two areas:

• Information modeling in public space with a focus on infrastructure

• Strategy of smart management of rainwater in the urbanized area”

Comment: Remedial measures in the water sector ( water supply, wastewater and storm water ) include a much broader set of areas, involving physical and non-physical measures. As so,  include “among others”, after “...can be found..”

 Line 534 replace by “solutiones” by “solutions”.

Lines 570-577: After these lines, include a comment like the following one: “Nevertheless, for urban areas, without a good calibrated model simulating the hydraulic performance of overland flow, inlets, urban sewers and their interactions, realistic flooding results are not possible, and softwares are available for that purpose”.

 line 594 . Figure 4 shall be improved and mentioned before be presented ( in line 591 or before )

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript introduced the information modeling of buildings and its subsequent extension to the information modeling of cities, especially used for improving the quality of the municipal management, in water management structures and the rainwater management. However, there are many descriptions of the modeling process in the manuscript, and the innovative analysis is insufficient, some comments as following:

[1] ‘Materials and Methods’ part should be simplified, the description of the model is too extensive.

[2] “3.1.1. Advantages of map model” only one part in the 3.1? The headline can be omitted.

[3] The sequence of ‘2.1” don’t found in the manuscript.

[4] There are many general descriptions in the manuscript, quantitative analysis was needed to be supplement.

[5] There are many short paragraphs in the manuscript. It is recommended to combine some paragraphs. Such as Line 376.

[6] Figure 4 was not clearly enough to find the information.

[7] The conclusion should be further simplified to highlight innovation.

 

Author Response

See attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The article has been revised very well, so I would suggest to accept in its present form.

Reviewer 2 Report

It is considered that main suggestions and comments have been adequately responded

Reviewer 3 Report

The revised manuscript is improved in organization, and the authors have corrected the problems and suggestions pointed from the comments. It is noticed that the author has adjusted and added the relevant instructions, which makes the proposed method more logical and convincible. In summary, the author has a sufficient analysis of the proposed method. The revised manuscript can be accepted.