Associative Analysis of Inefficiencies and Station Activity Levels in Emergency Response
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the paper is very interesting, but I am having difficulty following the structure and comprehending the content. While the scope of this research is very similar to my current research area, I am missing some sections and the authors failed to present the different sections of the paper in a clear manner. I propose that the authors present their research in a reasonable format. They should begin with the introduction and provide critical motivation for their research in a logical manner. The related studies should be presented in another section. Although there are numerous studies within the scope of this research, the authors missed many of them. This scope falls in a number of research scopes, including ambulance dispatching planning, bus evacuation problems, humanitarian planning, and hospital evacuation planning, please address following studies:
Yazdani, Maziar, Mohammad Mojtahedi, and Martin Loosemore. "Enhancing evacuation response to extreme weather disasters using public transportation systems: a novel simheuristic approach." Journal of Computational Design and Engineering 7.2 (2020): 195-210.
Rautenstrauss, Maximiliane, Layla Martin, and Stefan Minner. "Ambulance dispatching during a pandemic: Tradeoffs of categorizing patients and allocating ambulances." European journal of operational research (2021).
Yazdani, Maziar, et al. "A modelling framework to design an evacuation support system for healthcare infrastructures in response to major flood events." Progress in Disaster Science 13 (2022): 100218.
Following the literature review section, authors must present the research methodology section. They can explain the case study topic, databases, and information used for this study. In the current version, a significant portion of this section has been presented in irrelevant section in the "2.background" section.
After this section, the authors should clearly and briefly explain the research problem. The research problem is VERY unclear in the current version. A reader should read different sections to understand the research problem. Therefore, I strongly suggest that the authors explain the research problem in a maximum of 500 words and finally state the objective that they are following in the problem. I suggest enhancing the quality of this section use a figure.
In section 3 of the present manuscript, the authors mentioned that this is the solution. Initially, the title is inappropriate and must be revised. Then, the authors must systematically describe their solution method. I suggest providing a brief explanation of the method, which appears to be an integrated method, before delving into each component in greater depth. Validation and analysis must be thoroughly discussed.
I found this paper very interesting to apply to the hospital evacuation problem; please discuss how this paper can also help it, as in emergency situations, we must use rescue vehicles such as an ambulance. For more information, please see "Hospital evacuation modelling: A critical literature review on current knowledge and research gaps."
In addition to these major comments, there are additional minor comments that need to be addressed.
- The title is unclear and does not accurately reflect the paper's content.
- Numerous lines of the Abstract are devoted to the introduction or general assertions. It should be revised and some additional important sections, such as research gaps, should be included.
- Please consider revising Line 27. "More recently, machine learning and deep learning approaches have also been considered [8,9]"
- From lines 32 to 40, the authors provided a number of factors. They ought to be supported by relevant references.
- Certain sections, such as those pertaining to databases, should be relocated to a separate section as method.
- In figure 1 there are two closer stations. It is somewhat confusing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper presents a tool that discover and analyze some inefficiencies related to medical emergency response. The tool uses historical data, extracted from Portoguese EMS.
Some suggestions/questions follows:
1. Data are collected from digital or manual forms? Are they free forms (i.e., do they use natural language to describe the report)?
2. You define a threshold (line 148) that is, by default, 1.5, is there some rationale about the value? You write that can be adjusted to the desired sensitivity, is the an interval?
3. (line 192), Please specify what "sufficiently large" means?
4. When possible use an algorithm environment to describe algorithms, for example, in the period starting at line 212
5. Have you tested more input parameters? Changing W and D have an impact on results (269-275)
6. Figure 7, the characters are larger than picture, please change fonts and make picture greater.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In this manuscript, the authors propose a Data-driven Analysis of Potential response Inefficiencies (DAPI), a tool able to discover and analyze inefficiencies in emergency response. However, I will comment on some aspects to improve the quality of the article, and the changes performed by the authors are highlighted:
-Some acronyms are wrong. The correct way to write them is “Emergency Medical Services (EMS)”. Respecting the same order. This error must be fixed in all acronyms throughout the document.
-Improve the title of Section 3.
-In line 156 has a different text format.
-The authors must place a bibliographical reference in “Harvesine distance”.
-The word “OpenStreetMap” is written in another text format.
-The Equations are not cited in the text of the manuscript.
-In line 161, “The” is misspelt.
-Figures 1, 3 and 6 do not contain the geographical coordinates of the maps, the scale and much less the source from which they have been downloaded.
-The Figures are very far from where they have been mentioned in the text.
-In Figure 9 contains a title and is not written in detail. For that reason, the text of the document is used.
-In Figure 4, Harvestine Distance and Actual road Distance do not contain a unit of measure.
-The Figures are not clear, and it seems that they have been screenshotted.
-Why was a range of hours between 5 pm and 7 pm considered?
-Where did you get the data to perform the study?
-What is the Origin-Destination matrix that you have considered for the investigation?
-What is BVGUIMAR? There is no explanation of its meaning or what it refers to in the text of the document.
-What is BIIFDP? There is no explanation in the text of the document.
-Why is the proposal always measured in a straight line and not the actual distance of the roads?
-What is the means of transport by which the proposal is being made? Vehicle, helicopter, etc given in Figures 1 and 6.
-If it is by land, are traffic conditions being considered in the investigation?
-What fits the inefficiency in emergency response?
-What parameters were considered to choose the study scenario?
-Was a simulator used to check what was proposed?
-The authors must improve the Conclusions Section and add future works.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The submitted manuscript proposes a novel data-driven approach for discovery and analysis of potential inefficiencies in medical emergency response in Portugal. The article is interesting to read, especially the practical aspects that might be used to increase the safety of patients.
Below, I give point by point my questions that refer to particular places in the manuscript:
Line 148: How was the value selected?
Figure 3: How would it look like with smaller or bigger value of the parameter? A comparison illustrating different scenarios would be interesting.
Line 192: “A sufficiently large value for D should be selected”. How large? An example should be given.
Line 240: “Ideally, the size of X should be sufficiently large”. Again – how large? An example should be given.
Line 270: I suppose there is an error. Two weeks are not seven days!
Table 1 (and some more): What is the p-value?
Lines 368-369: “5,176 368 out of 3,668 potential inefficiencies” -> should be in the other order.
Some minor comments are given below:
Figure 5: What is RPV? This acronym appears first in line 174, but is explained in line 199.
English language and typing should be carefully checked, see e.g. line 161 “THe”.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The quality of the paper has improved significantly. It can be published in its present form. Congrats
Author Response
Thank you very much for all the care and effort in reviewing our article.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thanks to the authors for performing the suggested changes in the manuscript. Before publication, authors must review the English spelling and acronym changes indicated in the previous review.
Author Response
Thank you very much for all the care and effort in reviewing our article. We used Grammarly to proofread the entire document once more and made minor writing revisions to ensure the correctness of the English spelling and grammar of the article.
Reviewer 4 Report
This is already a revised version of the manuscript that I have reviewed before. I appreciate the efforts of the authors to improve the quality of the article. I am satisfied with authors’ responses to my previous review as well as with changes in the manuscript. This allows me to recommend the acceptance of the work.
Author Response
Thank you very much for all the care and effort in reviewing our article.
