A Bleeding Edge Web Application for Early Detection of Cyanobacterial Blooms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is interesting.

1.The document is mainly descriptive, and the contents and organization don’t fit the typical article.
2. I don’t find any specific gap in the field covered by the presented work.
3. The manuscript focuses on the description of an application. No results or data were presented.
4. I suggest that the authors remove section 2 and submit the manuscript as a short communication. Alternatively, the authors may include one or more examples of real cases or scenarios, presenting the raw data obtained from sensors and the data analysis methodology, calculations, and discussion.
5. Since no data is presented, the conclusions are superficial and descriptive as the article.
6. The references must be selected according to a new version of the document according to the recommendations in point 4 above.
7. New tables and figures must be presented according to a new version of the document according to the recommendations in point 4 above.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The early detection of algal and cyanobacterial blooms (HACBs) is an important topic and the development of DEVS-BLOOM has been a significant achievement. However, I am less convinced about the research contribution of the web application that has been developed to support it. This seems to be a straightforward use of Django and associated technologies. Most of section 3 is a high level overview of standard web technologies - Django, use of access control, data exchange formats. The review of EWSs in the preceding section is interesting but it does not identify any insights that lead into innovations to be explored in section 3. As a result, no research questions appear that could be explored in the later parts of the paper.

As a consequence, Section 3 is followed by a walk through of the application but it does not contain any formal evaluation of the application. It is not possible to do otherwise as no evaluation criteria have been identified in the earlier parts of the paper.

Overall, the development of the user application seems very straightforward and does not appear to have required any innovative thinking. So the research contribution of this specific paper is unclear. This is not to deny the significance of DEVS-BLOOM itself, it is just that the Application to support it is not "bleeding edge" but a fairly conventional Django app.

The paper is very readable although needs a careful proof read.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The developed web application is important for alerting, giving information and predictions regarding Cyanobacterial Blooms. It is in alpha variant as some experimentations are performed. Results are analyzed and commented. 

The research method could be improved by adding a separate section to explain it.

Instead of discussing the properties of the data formats, it is much better to discuss the characteristics of the libraries, which are only compared in Table 2 without any comment or explanation.

All figures and tables should be mentioned and explained in the text, not just placed as such in the article.

It would be very useful for the reader to graphically present the functional and technical architecture of the web application and then discuss the individual functions.

It will be interesting to mention how many, what and how the sensors from which the data are collected are located. The used sensor technology is just mentioned.

It is very good that there is a comparison of Early Warning System through Table 1.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Although I am still a little sceptical about the merits of the research as a web application per se, I do think the paper does add to the overall research program of the authors. From that point of view I feel that the revised paper can now provide a useful addition to the literature. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your feedback, we appreciate your comments.