Application of GIS Tools in the Measurement Analysis of Urban Spatial Layouts Using the Square Grid Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the Editor for giving me a chance to review an interesting and valuable paper. I found some merits in both methodology and results. The authors present a simple while fundamental workflow to introduce GIS to the historic city map, which is meaningful and can be well and easily applied to HGIS and cartography. 

In my opinion, this paper has a good potential to be published in the journal. However, I also have some concerns about the different parts of the manuscript. If the author(s) address carefully to the comments, I'll recommend publication of the manuscript in the journal:

1. The Abstract and Introduction should be improved and probably re-organizes. Especially in the abstract section, the current version doesn't present the background clearly.
2. The result section contains the comparison in several towns, which may be hard to follow. The author is suggested to re-organize the section or present the summary at the beginning of the section.
3. As one of the most crucial figures, Figure 6 is suggested to be improved. Some details are not perfect. In addition, the author may add the schematic diagram of two tools ( i.e., HGIS fishnet and HGIS fishnet Rhombus) in the workflow. Instead of just showing the name of two tools.
4. Figure 2 lacks the compass.
5. There are some minor errors in writing. For example, excess space exists in Line 20 and Line 34. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to the review process. We have strived to incorporate changes reflecting all of the suggestions provided by your review.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns:

1. The Abstract and Introduction should be improved and probably re-organizes. Especially in the abstract section, the current version doesn't present the background clearly.

Abstract has been shortened and remodeled due to Reviewer's suggestions as to indicate most vital elements of the article (lines 12–26). Similarly, the Introduction section has been reconsidered and restructured as well (lines 48–60, 63, 67, 76, 81, 143–156).

2. The result section contains the comparison in several towns, which may be hard to follow. The author is suggested to re-organize the section or present the summary at the beginning of the section.

The required changes were made by adding an explanatory and systemizing description of the selection of research units at the beginning of the Results section (lines 337 – 345). The changes made, as suggested by the Reviewer, allowed for greater clarity and cohesion of the analysis conducted.

3. As one of the most crucial figures, Figure 6 is suggested to be improved. Some details are not perfect. In addition, the author may add the schematic diagram of two tools ( i.e., HGIS fishnet and HGIS fishnet Rhombus) in the workflow. Instead of just showing the name of two tools.

The quality of Figure 6 has been improved (line 332). The schematic workflow has been simplified. Drawings showing source materials have been removed due to poor quality at such a small size. Maps that were placed in schematic workflow are visible in figures 7–10. Figure 6 was saved as a file with the *.jpg extension and resolution of 330 dpi. The schematic diagrams of two tools (HGIS fishnet and HGIS fishnet Rhombus) are presented in Figures 4 and 5. It seems that placing the working scheme of HGIS tools in the workflow will unnecessarily increase its volume, and at the same time the content of Figures 4 and 5 will be repeated.

4. Figure 2 lacks the compass.

Thank you for pointing out this issue. The compass and geographic grid were put on the map (line 187).

5. There are some minor errors in writing. For example, excess space exists in Line 20 and Line 34.

The text was checked, excess spaces have been removed.

 

Once again, thank you for the in-depth review.

On behalf of the research team,

Marta Nalej, PhD

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper Application of GIS tools in the analysis of urban spatial layouts using the square grid method describes the creation of GIS tool for analysis of medieval towns.

The abstract is not well written. It does not highlight the essential parts of the article.

The introduction is written clearly and appropriately.

The core of the article describes the tool for morphology and metrology. The main benefit of the tool is the adjustment of mesh size, automatically converting historical measurement units and comparing results for different city maps.

Unfortunately, the main problem of the article is the lack of practical examples of how the tool can be used in praxis. The possibility of creating the overlaying grid is well described. However, the next steps are not sufficiently explained. In the current form, the paper is not so strong to be published in ISPRS IGI.

Why do you not use open-source GIS software that can be more accessible for archaeologists or create online tools?

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to the review process. We have strived to incorporate changes reflecting the bulk of the suggestions provided by your review.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns:

The abstract is not well written. It does not highlight the essential parts of the article.

Abstract has been shortened and remodeled due to Reviewer's suggestions as to indicate most vital elements of the article (lines 12–26).

Unfortunately, the main problem of the article is the lack of practical examples of how the tool can be used in praxis. The possibility of creating the overlaying grid is well described. However, the next steps are not sufficiently explained. In the current form, the paper is not so strong to be published in ISPRS IGI.

The article describes (in section 3. Results) three examples of practical use of the HGIS fishnet and HGIS fishnet Rhombus tools for Nowy Staw, Elblag and Grudziądz. For these towns the units of distance and area measurement used when plotting them in the field were known, based on previous studies. With the help of prepared HGIS Tools, grids of different cell sizes were placed on the plans of the above-mentioned towns. The tests carried out confirmed that tools allow to find proper measurement units. If the dimensions of the measurement units are not known, the possibility of applying many grids of various cell sizes allows for a significant acceleration of the research. Tools tests were carried out for 13 different towns plans, among them: Puck, Środa Śląska, Iława, Opole and others (which in medieval times belonged to different European states). For all of them, conducted tests confirmed the effectiveness of invented tools. The authors presented in the article only selected examples, because including all of them did not add anything new to the presented content, but only increased the volume of the article.

The principal aim of the article was to describe the possibility of using GIS tools to perform measurement analysis as part of the analysis of urban spatial layouts. After identifying the units of measurement of distance and area used in plotting city plans in the field, further research will be the subject of the next stage of HGIS studies.

Why do you not use open-source GIS software that can be more accessible for archaeologists or create online tools?

The tool was developed for ArcGIS 10.7 because this type of software is used by the authors. Using the above-mentioned software in our research, we created a tool compatible with this type of software. Thank you for pointing out the issue related to the use of open source software. Preparing a tool that will work properly, for example in the QGIS software (in the form of a plug-in), requires a lot of work. Also, the adaptation of the tool to ArcGIS Pro software requires changing the Python language version from 2.7 to 3.6. However, one of the tools (HGIS Fishnet) runs in ArcGIS Pro (2.4.2). Information about the availability of the ‘Create Fishnet tool’ in other types of software (other versions of ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, QGIS) was added in section 2.3 "GIS Tools" (lines 240–479). We described the lack of an open source version of the tool as a limitation in the section 4. "Discussion" (lines 473–479). Online version of the tool requires access to resources in the form of computing power and server space. At the moment we do not have such resources. Nevertheless, we agree, that it would be great to elaborate and share this tool to some wider audience. That is why we decided to publish our article in International Journal of Geo-Information. Further step in developing our HGIS Tools will be creation of its open source version and ArcGIS Pro version.

 

Once again, thank you for the in-depth review.

On behalf of the research team,

Marta Nalej, PhD

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

General comments:

The submitted paper is an interesting approach to the study of application of GIS in the analysis of urban spatial layouts. The inventory design is appropriate, the statistical analysis is well grounded, the results are significant and with scientific soundness.

The objectives are clearly presented and analyzed, but they are too separated. It is necessary to find a way to connect these two objectives, for example in the discussion section.

The structure of the manuscript is polished but there is a need for revision by an English native speaker. In addition, there are still some lacks in the methodology, which would need extra amendments.  

 

 

Structure of the manuscript

Title

The title is not very proper for the presented study. I would suggest using a title that do not include the term affected area, as it is not clear what the authors mean exactly at this point.

 

Abstract

I found the abstract adequate and concise. Nevertheless, I suggest rewriting the sentence starting in line 25. This sentence does not clarify the results obtained in the study.

Line 20: Check double spacing.

Line 25: Remove “In the authors' opinión”.

 

 

Introduction

This section provides the necessary information for a scientific introduction. The authors have built a well based scientific background and set the scientific gap to be filled up within this study. Nevertheless, I suggest stating more clearly the specific objectives of the study.

 

Material and methods

Lines 136-151: I find this paragraph too local and not very interesting for international audience. Please, try to summarize the information.

Figure 2: Please, include coordinates. It is a bit confusing that you mix cities with “studied towns and cities”.

Line 189: I find this sentence a bit confusing: “The article also uses monographic publications and articles, which can be divided into two groups”. Please, rewrite it.

Line 194-215: I find this paragraph too long and not very interesting for GIS experts. Please, try to summarize the information.

Figure 6: this figure has low quality. Please, replace it with a new one with better quality.

 

 

 

Results

This section is too large comparing to the rest of the sections. Try to summarize it and focus in the connection with the objectives of the manuscript.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to the review process. We have strived to incorporate changes reflecting the bulk of the suggestions provided by your review.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns:

The objectives are clearly presented and analysed, but they are too separated. It is necessary to find a way to connect these two objectives, for example in the discussion section.

The required changes were made by adding an explanatory and systemising description of the selection of research units at the beginning of the Discussion section (lines 422–427). The changes made, as suggested by the Reviewer, enabled greater clarity and cohesion of the analysis conducted.

The structure of the manuscript is polished but there is a need for revision by an English native speaker.  

Thank you for this suggestion. We decided that the text needs to undergo a language revision.

In addition, there are still some lacks in the methodology, which would need extra amendments.

We have made significant changes in the section 2.3. 'GIS Tools' (lines 227–249) and 4. 'Discussion' (lines 465–476) to clarify the objectives of the research and to better combine the methods and tools used in the research of measurement modules of examined town's spatial layouts when using the square grid. We hope that it contributed to a better explanation of the issues related to the research methodology. Additionally, the source material of HGIS Tools (python scripts) are available in supplementary materials as well as tools usage instructions in the text file ‘HGIS Tools User manual’.

The title is not very proper for the presented study. I would suggest using a title that do not include the term affected area, as it is not clear what the authors mean exactly at this point.

Title of the paper has been changed. Current version of the title is as follows:

“Application of GIS tools in the measurement analysis of urban spatial layouts using the square grid method"

I found the abstract adequate and concise. Nevertheless, I suggest rewriting the sentence starting in line 25. This sentence does not clarify the results obtained in the study.

Relevant lines have been changed to:’ The obtained results confirmed that HGIS Tools allowed to determine the hypothetical measurement module of the layout of the cities studied. The results were consistent with the analyzes of other authors carried out with the traditional grid-square methods. The test of the HGIS Fishnet tool showed its significant potential in conducting morphometric analyzes of spatial arrangements of sediments on a larger scale.”

Line 20: Check double spacing.

It has been corrected, excess spaces have been removed.

Line 25: Remove “In the authors' opinión”.

Fixed. Thank you for noticing this issue.

Introduction (…) Nevertheless, I suggest stating more clearly the specific objectives of the study.

“Introduction” (section 1) was revised and expanded (lines 46–60) as to indicate most vital elements of the article and to and to clarify the objectives of the study.

Lines 136-151: I find this paragraph too local and not very interesting for international audience. Please, try to summarize the information.

Necessary amendments have been made in the section: 2. Materials and Methods, 2.1. Study area (lines 166–181), due to suggestions made by the Reviewer. Only most important information about morphogenesis and morphology if selected towns remained. These information, according to the authors are essential for better understanding of the structure of examined towns. Consequently, selection of tested urban units allowed for investigating different functionalities of presented tool.

Figure 2: Please, include coordinates. It is a bit confusing that you mix cities with “studied towns and cities”.

The geographic grid has been added to Figure 2. Changes have been made in the legend, in which the “studied towns” and “main cities” were distinguished (line 186).

Line 189: I find this sentence a bit confusing: “The article also uses monographic publications and articles, which can be divided into two groups”. Please, rewrite it.

Thank you for pointing out this issue. the sentence was changed to: ’In the research also publications and sources concerning the use of square grid methods and the application of the GIS method in historical studies, as well as describing aspects of the history and metrology of the studied cities were used.’ (lines 220–222).

Line 194-215: I find this paragraph too long and not very interesting for GIS experts. Please, try to summarize the information.

Paragraphs (lines 194–215) have been shortened (lines 227–232) and information about the availability of the tool in other types of software has been added (lines 240–249).

Figure 6: this figure has low quality. Please, replace it with a new one with better quality.

The quality of Figure 6 has been improved (line 332). The schematic workflow has been simplified. Drawings showing the source materials have been removed due to poor quality at such a small size. The maps that were placed in schematic workflow are visible in the Figures 7­–10. Figure was saved in a file with the *.jpg extension and resolution of 330 dpi.

Results. This section is too large comparing to the rest of the sections. Try to summarize it and focus in the connection with the objectives of the manuscript.

We believe that the results were presented in correct way. Examples of three cities were presented, which allowed to confirm the usefulness of HGIS Tools for generating the grid for morphological and morphometric studies on the example of selected urban centres. The examples were selected to best illustrate the operation of the tools. We also  made some corrections to present the objectives of the study in a more clear and consistent manner by adding an explanatory and systemizing description at the beginning of the Results section (lines 337–345).  The size of Results section may appear larger compared to the others due to the location of Figures 7–10. The figures are of great importance in presenting the results of using HGIS Tools.

 

Once again, thank you for the in-depth review.

On behalf of the research team,

Marta Nalej, PhD

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comparing Figure 4 and Figure 7 or Figure 8 I propose to align the height of the letters. In Figures 7 and 8 "(a)" and "(b)" are significantly higher

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to the review process. We have strived to incorporate changes reflecting the bulk of the suggestions provided by your review.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns:

Comparing Figure 4 and Figure 7 or Figure 8 I propose to align the height of the letters. In Figures 7 and 8 "(a)" and "(b)" are significantly higher.

The size of the descriptions on Figures 4, 5 and 7–10 was changed and unified.

 

Once again, thank you for the review.

On behalf of the research team,

Marta Nalej, PhD

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

This article deals with the development of a new toolbox for ArcMap, which focuses on improved fishnet creation. In this context, I lack a deeper discussion of alternatives and anchoring in a newer software (ArcGIS Pro) or open source alternatives. The binding of the created script to ArcMap is the main problem of the paper. The authors created it for the ArcMap 10.7 environment (I have tested it successfully in the latest ArcMap 10.8.1), however, ArcMap SW is not and will not be supported in the long term. Therefore, this is a relatively short-term output. To increase the value of the article, I strongly recommend including a discussion of possible use in ArcGIS Pro SW and, for objectivity's sake, expanding the research to include existing open source alternatives (at least the major ones - e.g. QGIS, GRASS). This is missing in the whole text.

In terms of literature work, I recommend including texts related to historical cartography and approaches to digitizing old medium-scale maps.

Within the "Discussion" chapter, I also recommend elaborating on the possible error rate of the script in relation to errors in georeferencing the input data. At the same time, I suggest that a brief manual for the script be included in the "supplementary" section.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for providing us with the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript. We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to the review process. We have strived to incorporate changes reflecting the bulk of the suggestions provided by your review.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns:

This article deals with the development of a new toolbox for ArcMap, which focuses on improved fishnet creation. In this context, I lack a deeper discussion of alternatives and anchoring in a newer software (ArcGIS Pro) or open source alternatives. The binding of the created script to ArcMap is the main problem of the paper. The authors created it for the ArcMap 10.7 environment (I have tested it successfully in the latest ArcMap 10.8.1), however, ArcMap SW is not and will not be supported in the long term. Therefore, this is a relatively short-term output. To increase the value of the article, I strongly recommend including a discussion of possible use in ArcGIS Pro SW and, for objectivity's sake, expanding the research to include existing open source alternatives (at least the major ones - e.g. QGIS, GRASS). This is missing in the whole text.

The tool was developed for ArcGIS 10.7 because this type of software is used by the authors. Using the above-mentioned software in our research, we created a tool compatible with this type of software. Thank you for pointing out the issue related to the use of open source software. Preparing tools that will work properly, for example in the QGIS software (in the form of a plug-in), requires a lot of work. Adaptation of the tools to ArcGIS Pro software requires changing the Python language version from 2.7 to 3.6. However, one of the tools (HGIS Fishnet) runs in ArcGIS Pro (2.4.2). Information about the availability of the tool in other types of software (other versions of ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, QGIS) was added in section 2.3 "GIS Tools" (lines 240–249). We described the lack of an open source and ArcGIS Pro version of  tools as a limitation in the section 4. "Discussion" (lines 473–476). Nevertheless, we agree, that it would be great to elaborate and share this tool to some wider audience. That is why we decided to publish our article in International Journal of Geo-Information. Further step in developing our HGIS tool will be creation of its open source version and ArcGIS Pro version

In terms of literature work, I recommend including texts related to historical cartography and approaches to digitizing old medium-scale maps.

We added some additional works to the paper’s bibliography:

Terrone, M.; Piana, P.; Paliaga, G.; D’Orazi, M.; Faccini, F. Coupling Historical Maps and LiDAR Data to Identify Man-Made Landforms in Urban Areas. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Information 2021, 10, doi:10.3390/ijgi10050349. (line 71)

Skaloš, J.; Weber, M.; Lipský, Z.; Trpáková, I.; Šantrůčková, M.; Uhlířová, L.; Kukla, P. Using Old Military Survey Maps and Orthophotograph Maps to Analyse Long-Term Land Cover Changes – Case Study (Czech Republic). Appl. Geogr. 2011, 31, 426–438, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2010.10.004. (line 76)

We would just like to point out that the original, revised version of the manuscript, refers to that issue. Sample literature positions in the field of digitalization of archival cartographic materials are described in:

• Jenny, B.; Hurni, L. Studying Cartographic Heritage: Analysis and Visualization of Geometric Distortions. Graph. 2011, 35, 402–411, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2011.01.005.
• Affek, A. Kalibracja Map Historycznych z Zastosowaniem GIS. Kom. Kraj. Kult. PTG 2012, 48–62.
• Jaskulski, M.; Łukasiewicz, G.; Nalej, M. Porównanie Metod Transformacji Map Historycznych. Geomatyki 2013, 11, 41–57.
• Timár, G.; Biszak, S. Digitizing and Georeferencing of the Historical Cadastral Maps (1856-60) of Hungary. In Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 5th international workshop on digital approaches in cartographic heritage; Vienna, Austria, 2010; pp. 559–564.
• Jaskulski, M.; Nalej, M. Preparing Historical Maps for Presentation in a Geoportal. Acta Univ. Lodz. Folia Geogr. Socio-Oeconomica 2015, 22, 141–159, doi:10.18778/1508-1117.22.08.
• Dorobantu, S.; Negrescu, C.; others The Use of Open Source Solutions in the Process of Georeferencing the Historical Maps. J. Agric. Sci. 2018, 50, 43–50.
• Baiocchi, V.; Lelo, K.; Milone, M.V.; Mormile, M. Accuracy of Different Georeferencing Strategies on Historical Maps of Rome. Tech. 2013, 1, 10–16.
• Brovelli, M.A.; Minghini, M. Georeferencing Old Maps: A Polynomial-Based Approach for Como Historical Cadastres. e-Perimetron 2012, 7, 97–110.
• Brigante, R.; Radicioni, F. GGeoreferencing of Historical Maps: GIS Technology for Urban Analysis. Tech. 2014, 9.
• Guerra, F. 2W: New Technologies for the Georeferenced Visualisation of Historic Cartography. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. 2000, 33, 339–346.
• Howe, N.R.; Weinman, J.; Gouwar, J.; Shamji, A. Deformable Part Models for Automatically Georeferencing Historical Map Images. In Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 27th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems; Chicago, USA, 2019; pp. 540–543.
• Janata, T.; Cajthaml, J. Georeferencing of Multi-Sheet Maps Based on Least Squares with Constraints—First Military Mapping Survey Maps in the Area of Czechia. Sci. 2021, 11, 299, doi:https://doi. org/10.3390/app11010299.

Within the "Discussion" chapter, I also recommend elaborating on the possible error rate of the script in relation to errors in georeferencing the input data. At the same time, I suggest that a brief manual for the script be included in the "supplementary" section.

Thank you for noticing this issue. The "Discussion" section has been supplemented with information on the limitations of the use of invented tool resulting from spatial adjustment errors and distortions of historical cartographic materials. The error rate of the script is proportional to errors in georeferencing of the input data as the values of the distortions and their impact are an individual feature of historical cartographic materials and the parameters used for their calibration (lines 465–473).

Tools usage instructions have been added to the supplementary material as the text file ‘HGIS Tools User manual’.

 

Once again, thank you for the in-depth review.

On behalf of the research team,

Marta Nalej, PhD

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors improved the abstract, however I still think that development of the tool for creation of fishnet is not strong enough to be published in ISPRS IJGI.

Reviewer 3 Report

Congratulations on addressing the main concerns observed in the previous round of revision.

Reviewer 5 Report

The paper is much better after the author's revision. I appreciate the discussion and linkage to open source GIS and further ideas about ArcGIS Pro tools. However, with the old and unsupported version of ArcMap I do not think it could interest much readers. If the functionality would be prepared for ArcGIS Pro or some other open source tool which is still maintained, it would be OK. In this case I must say that it is a well prepared article, based on old and unsupported software. The reason of using ArcMap 10.7 based on author's familiarity is not sufficient enough.