Case Study of the Application of an Innovative Guide for the Seismic Vulnerability Evaluation of Schools Located in Sangolquí, Interandean Valley in Ecuador

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This research project is a convenient tool for evaluating seismic risk to implement prevention, mitigation, and adaptation measures to reduce the establishment's vulnerability to seismic hazards in a study area previously impacted by several earthquakes in central Ecuador.

The paper is quite well written, and the main ideas are quite well developed. In my opinion, the paper should be accepted after strong revisions, based on the following general and specific suggestions.

General suggestions are:

·       What are the lessons learned from the conclusions other than the observation?

·       Is this finding original to this paper or is it a validation of a previously established notion? Please add a relevant comment on the innovations introduced by this work.

Specific suggestions are:

·       The use of non-technical words should be avoided.

·       Please avoid, as far as possible, the use of abbreviations in the abstract, in particular, the author should explain the meaning of FEMA.

·       The main aim of selected methods (advantages/disadvantages) should be presented more clearly.

·       Please, check the citations.

·       The quality of the figures should be improved.

·       The well-known formulation should be shortened, and related references should be cited for related researchers.

·       Are the school buildings all in r.c. or there is also masonry?

·       The reference part of the paper should be rearranged according to the journal guidelines also considering the references to European areas. Some interesting suggestions are:

o   DOI: 10.1016/j.jobe.2015.09.008

o   DOI: 10.2174/1874149502115010149

o   DOI: 10.1080/15732479.2016.1268174

Author Response

Response to reviewer #1

 

Dear expert reviewer,

 

As authors of the manuscript entitled “Case study of the application of an innovative guide for the seismic vulnerability evaluation of schools located in Sangolquí, Interandean Valley in Ecuador”, we appreciated a lot your description and comments on the document, as we are certain and convinced, that they have been useful to eliminate obvious errors and to enrich the fluency and clarity of the entire article. Hereunder, we will reply and accomplish to change each mentioned point based on your input.

This research project is a convenient tool for evaluating seismic risk to implement prevention, mitigation, and adaptation measures to reduce the establishment's vulnerability to seismic hazards in a study area previously impacted by several earthquakes in central Ecuador.

The paper is quite well written, and the main ideas are quite well developed. In my opinion, the paper should be accepted after strong revisions, based on the following general and specific suggestions.

• What are the lessons learned from the conclusions other than the observation?

The lessons about the convenience of the proposed tool and its results have been highlighted between lines 91 and 96.

• Is this finding original to this paper or is it a validation of a previously established notion? Please add a relevant comment on the innovations introduced by this work.

The purpose of the study has been further clarified between lines 91 and 101.

Specific suggestions are:

• The use of non-technical words should be avoided.

      Language has been revised to address this issue.

• Please avoid, as far as possible, the use of abbreviations in the abstract, in particular, the author should explain the meaning of FEMA.

      The abstract has been modified to include an explanation of FEMA.

• The main aim of selected methods (advantages/disadvantages) should be presented more clearly.

      The advantages of the selected methodology has been explained with more details in the introduction and the conclusions sections. The authors consider that the methodologies lacks of disadvantages.

• Please, check the citations.

Done

• The quality of the figures should be improved.

      We realized some minor but decisive changes, thanks for the hint.

• The well-known formulation should be shortened, and related references should be cited for related researchers.

The weel-known formulation has been included to allow any kind of stakeholders to get familiar with the methodology.

 

• Are the school buildings all in r.c. or there is also masonry?

In order to adress this question, the following statement has been included between lines 687 and 690:

“Table 13 lists the twelve evaluated schools in Sangolquí, which contemplates structures of type C3 in their majority. Some schools also use hybrid building systems, such as unreinforced masonry with wood or steel roof systems. Only a few buildings were identified as old existing RC framed buildings susceptible to brittle collapse.”

• The reference part of the paper should be rearranged according to the journal guidelines also considering the references to European areas. Some interesting suggestions are:

o   DOI: 10.1016/j.jobe.2015.09.008

o   DOI: 10.2174/1874149502115010149

o   DOI: 10.1080/15732479.2016.1268174

The following reference has been included in the Introduction section, to aknowledge for the suggested reference: 56. F. Clementi, E. Quagliarini, G. Maracchini, S. Lenci, Post-World War II Italian school buildings: typical and specific seismic vulnerabilities, Journal of Building Engineering, Volume 4, 2015, Pages 152-166, ISSN 2352-7102, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2015.09.008.

 

Once again and with all due respect, we are very thankful for your comments and corrections, which helped to see a few unclear parts and or even faults of our side within our manuscript. With your comments we were able to smooth the text, clarify missing parts or wrong spellings, which resulted to a much better than the initial version of this current study.

 

Thanks a lot on behalf of all authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The research paper attempts to apply the US guidelines, FEMA P-1000 developped to assess and improve the American school safety against natural hazards, to the Ecuadorian scholastic building system, focusing mainly to the earthquake actions.

The paper is interesting and well written.

The main suggestions concern:

1. the conclusion section that in the present form is just a recapitulation of the content of the paper, without discussing the main relevant issues of the research.

2. the focus devoted only to the U.S. guidelines. The paper should benefit from some comparations to studies carried in other countries. I suggest therefore to improve the reference section. Few suggestions follow:

* Rasulo, A., Fortuna, M. A., & Borzi, B. (2016, July). A seismic risk model for Italy. In International conference on computational science and its applications (pp. 198-213). Springer, Cham.

* Rasulo, A., Testa, C., & Borzi, B. (2015, June). Seismic risk analysis at urban scale in Italy. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 403-414). Springer, Cham.

* Borzi, B., Ceresa, P., Faravelli, M., Fiorini, E., & Onida, M. (2013). Seismic risk assessment of Italian school buildings. In Computational methods in earthquake engineering (pp. 317-344). Springer, Dordrecht.

Author Response

Response to reviewer #2

 

Dear expert reviewer,

 

As authors of the manuscript entitled “Case study of the application of an innovative guide for the seismic vulnerability evaluation of schools located in Sangolquí, Interandean Valley in Ecuador”, we appreciated a lot your description and comments on the document, as we are certain and convinced, that they have been useful to eliminate obvious errors and to enrich the fluency and clarity of the entire article. Hereunder, we will reply and accomplish to change each mentioned point based on your input.

 

The research paper attempts to apply the US guidelines, FEMA P-1000 developped to assess and improve the American school safety against natural hazards, to the Ecuadorian scholastic building system, focusing mainly to the earthquake actions.

The paper is interesting and well written.

The main suggestions concern:

1. the conclusion section that in the present form is just a recapitulation of the content of the paper, without discussing the main relevant issues of the research.

Now the conclusions address the suggested ideas.

2. 
   the focus devoted only to the U.S. guidelines. The paper should benefit from some comparations to studies carried in other countries. I suggest therefore to improve the reference section. Few suggestions follow:
   
   * Rasulo, A., Fortuna, M. A., & Borzi, B. (2016, July). A seismic risk model for Italy. In International conference on computational science and its applications (pp. 198-213). Springer, Cham.
   
   * Rasulo, A., Testa, C., & Borzi, B. (2015, June). Seismic risk analysis at urban scale in Italy. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 403-414). Springer, Cham.
   
   * Borzi, B., Ceresa, P., Faravelli, M., Fiorini, E., & Onida, M. (2013). Seismic risk assessment of Italian school buildings. In Computational methods in earthquake engineering (pp. 317-344). Springer, Dordrecht.

 

The following reference has been included in the Introduction section, to aknowledge for other proposed methodolgies on the studied topic: 55. Borzi, B., Ceresa, P., Faravelli, M., Fiorini, E., & Onida, M. (2013). Seismic risk assessment of Italian school buildings. In Computational methods in earthquake engineering (pp. 317-344). Springer, Dordrecht.

 

Once again and with all due respect, we are very thankful for your comments and corrections, which helped to see a few unclear parts and or even faults of our side within our manuscript. With your comments we were able to smooth the text, clarify missing parts or wrong spellings, which resulted to a much better than the initial version of this current study.

 

Thanks a lot on behalf of all authors

Reviewer 3 Report

The theme of the manuscript is very good, the writing is meticulous and serious, the research content is substantial, the research method is reasonable and feasible, and some very meaningful conclusions have been obtained. It is an excellent academic paper.

However, there are a few details that the author needs to explain

1, How are the scores in Table 2 determined? There are several similar tables in the back that also have the same problem.

2, The capital letters of abbreviations are generally derived from the first letters of the corresponding words, but a large number of abbreviations in the text are confusing and affect the readability of the manuscript.

3, What are the characteristics of site soil types E and F?

4,For Section 4.4, these are basic common sense or normative provisions, which belong to qualitative analysis. Considering that this paper mainly focuses on quantitative calculation, can quantitative analysis be used in this section and Section 4.5?

5, The header and body of Table 10 are not on the same page.

Author Response

Response to reviewer #3

 

Dear expert reviewer,

 

As authors of the manuscript entitled “Case study of the application of an innovative guide for the seismic vulnerability evaluation of schools located in Sangolquí, Interandean Valley in Ecuador”, we appreciated a lot your description and comments on the document, as we are certain and convinced, that they have been useful to eliminate obvious errors and to enrich the fluency and clarity of the entire article. Hereunder, we will reply and accomplish to change each mentioned point based on your input.

The theme of the manuscript is very good, the writing is meticulous and serious, the research content is substantial, the research method is reasonable and feasible, and some very meaningful conclusions have been obtained. It is an excellent academic paper.

However, there are a few details that the author needs to explain

1, How are the scores in Table 2 determined? There are several similar tables in the back that also have the same problem.

They have been taken from FEMA P-154 [111].

2, The capital letters of abbreviations are generally derived from the first letters of the corresponding words, but a large number of abbreviations in the text are confusing and affect the readability of the manuscript.

The capital letters of the used abbreviations were derived from the spanish technical terms and we, the authors, agreeded to keep them as originally established.

3, What are the characteristics of site soil types E and F?

Section 4.4.4 now describes what site soil types E and F are.

4, For Section 4.4, these are basic common sense or normative provisions, which belong to qualitative analysis. Considering that this paper mainly focuses on quantitative calculation, can quantitative analysis be used in this section and Section 4.5?

We, the authors agree that qualitative analysis are more consistent with the proposed methodology. The basic common sense and normative provisions have been included to allow any kind of stakeholders to get familiar with the methodology.

5, The header and body of Table 10 are not on the same page.

      This issue has been corrected.

 

Once again and with all due respect, we are very thankful for your comments and corrections, which helped to see a few unclear parts and or even faults of our side within our manuscript. With your comments we were able to smooth the text, clarify missing parts or wrong spellings, which resulted to a much better than the initial version of this current study.

 

Thanks a lot on behalf of all authors

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been revised based on the comments from the reviewers. I suggest accepting as it is

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper can be published in the present form.