Landscape Sensitivity Assessment of Historic Districts Using a GIS-Based Method: A Case Study of Beishan Street in Hangzhou, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Thanks for responding to my reviews, this version looks good to me. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript entitled "Landscape Sensitivity Assessment of Historic Districts Using a GIS-Based Method: A Case Study of Beishan Street in Hangzhou, China" (Manuscript ID ijgi-2588835). Your comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We are honored that you think our revised version of the manuscript looks good.

We have revised and added some figures in the manuscript to make the figures and words easier to understand. The titles of these figures are highlighted in yellow. The revised figures are Figure 15 (Page 17 Line 528 in the revised manuscript / Page 18 Line 530 in the manuscript containing the revised record), Figure 18 (Page 18 Line 544 in the revised manuscript / Page 19 Line 546 in the manuscript containing the revised record), Figure 20 (Page 21 Line 621 in the revised manuscript / Page 22 Line 624 in the manuscript containing the revised record), and Figure 21 (Page 22 Line 657 in the revised manuscript / Page 24 Line 661 in the manuscript containing the revised record). The additional figure is Figure 7 (Page 10 Line 341 in the revised manuscript / Page 10 Line 342 in the manuscript containing the revised record).

Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments. Please find the detailed revisions in the manuscript containing the revised record attached. We are looking forward to your approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

The authors did well improving the manuscript.
It is now more solid and clear.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript entitled "Landscape Sensitivity Assessment of Historic Districts Using a GIS-Based Method: A Case Study of Beishan Street in Hangzhou, China" (Manuscript ID ijgi-2588835). Your comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We are honored that you think we did well in improving the manuscript.

We have revised and added some figures in the manuscript to make the figures and words easier to understand. The titles of these figures are highlighted in yellow. The revised figures are Figure 15 (Page 17 Line 528 in the revised manuscript / Page 18 Line 530 in the manuscript containing the revised record), Figure 18 (Page 18 Line 544 in the revised manuscript / Page 19 Line 546 in the manuscript containing the revised record), Figure 20 (Page 21 Line 621 in the revised manuscript / Page 22 Line 624 in the manuscript containing the revised record), and Figure 21 (Page 22 Line 657 in the revised manuscript / Page 24 Line 661 in the manuscript containing the revised record). The additional figure is Figure 7 (Page 10 Line 341 in the revised manuscript / Page 10 Line 342 in the manuscript containing the revised record).

Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments. Please find the detailed revisions in the manuscript containing the revised record attached. We are looking forward to your approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The article is interesting for the approach to a new assessment of landscape sensitivity for the specific case study of Beishan Street in Hangzhou, China.

However, reading and understanding the work is extremely difficult. It is especially worth reorganizing the part of the materials and methods whose figures make a minimal contribution to understanding the text.

As regards the typology of land use, it would be interesting to concretely characterize the environmental typologies described in the reality of Hangzhou to have a better understanding.

Even in the results the figures reported are difficult to understand.

Extend the conclusions also with more literature cases.

 Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript entitled "Landscape Sensitivity Assessment of Historic Districts Using a GIS-Based Method: A Case Study of Beishan Street in Hangzhou, China" (Manuscript ID ijgi-2588835). Your comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions in the manuscript containing the revised record attached. We are looking forward to your approval.

Comments 1: However, reading and understanding the work is extremely difficult. It is especially worth reorganizing the part of the materials and methods whose figures make a minimal contribution to understanding the text.

Response 1: It is really a great suggestion as Reviewer pointed out, and we have revised Figure 5 in Section 2 Materials and Methods, and explained the figure in detail (Page 7 Lines 230-240 in the revised manuscript / Page 7 Lines 231-241 in the manuscript containing the revised record). We have illustrated the sensitivity calculation method of weighted average more graphically by calculating the sensitivity level of the polygon plot in Figure 5 (Page 7 Line 228 in the revised manuscript / Page 7 Line 229 in the manuscript containing the revised record).

Comments 2: As regards the typology of land use, it would be interesting to concretely characterize the environmental typologies described in the reality of Hangzhou to have a better understanding.

Response 2: Following the Reviewer's suggestion, we have added Figure 7 to concretely characterize the land types in the study area (Page 10 Line 341 in the revised manuscript / Page 10 Line 342 in the manuscript containing the revised record). We have added photographs of the main land use types in the study area and emphasized the importance of these landscapes. In the paper, we have added, "The land use types in the southern, northwestern, and eastern areas of Beishan Street are mainly permanent water bodies, tree-covered areas, and built-up areas respectively. Meanwhile, these tree-covered hills, building complexes, and the lake are the most attractive scenery in the West Lake Scenic Spot where Beishan Street is located (Figure 7) (Pages 9-10 Lines 330-337 in the revised manuscript / Page 10 Lines 331-338 in the manuscript containing the revised record)."

Comments 3: Even in the results the figures reported are difficult to understand.

Response 3: Thank you for pointing this out. Therefore, we have revised some of the figures in Section 3.2 Total Landscape Sensitivity and Section 4 Discussion to make them easier to read and understand.

(1) Figure 15. Sensitivity weight. (Page 17 Line 528 in the revised manuscript / Page 18 Line 530 in the manuscript containing the revised record)

We used standard pie charts to illustrate the weights of ecological, visual, and cultural sensitivity to make the figure easier to understand.

(2) Figure 18. Proportion of plots at each sensitivity level in maps of (a) study area; (b) Beishan Street Historic District. (Page 18 Line 544 in the revised manuscript / Page 19 Line 546 in the manuscript containing the revised record)

Instead of the previous uniform grey label, we have used more specific color labels to illustrate levels of each sensitivity individually. These color labels make the figures easier to understand.

(3) Figure 20. Influence relationship of primary assessment factors. (Page 21 Line 621 in the revised manuscript / Page 22 Line 624 in the manuscript containing the revised record)

We have added a color bar label to the figure to show the connection between the color of the arrows and the degree of influence.

(4) Figure 21. Correlation of secondary assessment factors. (Page 22 Line 657 in the revised manuscript / Page 24 Line 661 in the manuscript containing the revised record)

We have added text notes to the color bar label in the figure to illustrate the connection between cell color and the degree of influence.

Comments 4: Extend the conclusions also with more literature cases.

Response 4: We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have added literature cases to support the conclusions of Section 5 Conclusions. Firstly, we have added case studies by "Shi, et al. [52]" and "Yang, et al. [53]" to illustrate that these alternatives can replace the assessment factors in the evaluation framework of this study (Page 23 Lines 688-693 in the revised manuscript / Page 25 Lines 692-697 in the manuscript containing the revised record). Secondly, we have added case studies by "Cheng, et al. [44]" and "Li, et al. [55]" to illustrate how emerging open source data can be used for further landscape evaluation studies (Page 24 Lines 727-732 in the revised manuscript / Page 25 Lines 731-736 in the manuscript containing the revised record). Finally, we have added case studies by "Liu and Li [16]" and "Zheng, et al. [19]" to illustrate that expert judgment is a common method for determining the weights of assessment factors in landscape studies (Page 24 Lines 733-735 in the revised manuscript / Page 25 Lines 737-739 in the manuscript containing the revised record).

Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Response: Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments. We have revised the manuscript through English Editing of MDPI. We have carefully checked and improved the English writing, and asked our fellow international students to help us correct it.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

 The article has improved in presentation and understanding.

 With regards to the type of land use, the additions made are fine. Similarly, the conclusions are improved with more extensive and interesting references to the literature.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper provides a methodological approach for evaluating different degrees of land sensitivity. The approach is illustrated by a case study applied to a Chinese study.

Overall, the paper might be of interest for the IJGI special issue, however the content suffers from several limitations. First the structure of the paper should be improved, the objectives of the paper clarified, as well as discussions on the impact and perspectives offered by the work. The case study is not completely convincing as too many details on the actions performed are given but not the scientific objectives and support behind.

Abstract: the abstract is written in an unusual style, point by point. It should be rewritten in a more fluid structure, and the originality and novelty of the work highlighted.

A similar comment applies to the introduction. The introduction of the context is presented using a series of sentences that should be much more connected, this will improve the readability of the whole arguments. A more compact presentation of the concepts of landscape and landscape sensibility will surely help as repetitive arguments do not help in identifying the main concepts behind these two notions. In the introduction it is mentioned that landscape sensitivity analysis can provide a basis for further preservation decisions, indeed this is a worthwhile and acceptable assumption but that deserves more details. Last as the introduction brings many (too many) ideas a suggestion will be to re-orientate the introduction towards the objectives of the paper, and a clearer presentation of the landscape and landscape sensitivity, and then a related work section to introduce previous works.

Still on the structure, the paper directly flows from the introduction to the material and methods, so there is a lack of prior presentation of the objectives of the paper, the research questions to address, and probably the method(s) to apply before presenting the data. As the data available is extensively presented in sections 2.1 and 2.2. there is a lack of introduction of the methodological components, and the underlying novelties.

The main sensitivity factors introduced in section 2.2 are:  ecological sensitivity, visual sensitivity, and 153

cultural sensitivity -> fine but additional motivation on the reasons behind these choices should be given. The following parts of the same section are very much oriented towards a technical report that presents the different functions applied, this is informative but it does not give too much details on the scientific originality of the whole approach.

Still equation (1) is not very much justified regarding the parameters chosen and the way they are valued.

A similar comment applies to section 3 on the data preparation, the content is quite acceptable for a technical report (as it gives the full necessary details on the implementation) but not for a scientific paper whose content should be oriented towards the scientific background, novelty of the approach, not the details of its implementation (plus indeed details on the computational complexity and performance of the approach developed).

As for equation (1) the authors should motivate the role and structure of this sensitivity level, and the role of the different parameters and why they are chosen.

Land-use sensitivity presented in section 3.2.1 seems to be derived from previous work (this being not the case for the building sensitivity if my understand is correct), this should be clarified, and the same comment also applied to the visual sensitivity. In other words, and this is an important request: the authors should clarify what is now, what is taken from previous work, as well as the interest of the possible combination of the different sensitivity values and how. Similar comments apply to the cultural sensitivity.

Therefore, a key issue lies in the combination of the different sensitivity values: as they all come from different dimensions a key issue is the way the relative importance of the different measures should be integrated, as well as the normalisation of the different values.

Section 4 discusses the different correlations, this is informative, but the authors should conclude this analysis by some general findings and statements that can be derived.

Finally, the authors should discuss what has been learn from the approach and how the study might provide a novel and practical way of analysing sensitivity degrees (and how this should be processed).

Careful proof-reading is required.

Reviewer 2 Report

The overal research design for the LSA is very well defined，and data processing seems very solid with the methodology.  However, some further clarifications should be addressed in the revision.

1. The Visual Sensetivity should consider the hight of individual buildings as the index for analysis. Please clarify how the "street view" and "random view points" take this index into account.

2.According to Fig. 13, the Landscape Cultural Sensitivity Map shows that urban areas are darker than the lake area, which may differ from intuitive observations.  Please discuss this difference with the data analysis and the intuitive observations from the cultural perception in everyday life.

3. Figure 2 is the research framework,  and Figure 14 is the outcome for the research data analysis of the case area.  Some discussions and clarification are needed to highlight the specific feature of Beishan District for its own feature.

The English is good for non-experts. Some tables are not easy to understand, need further work to present the data visually.  

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper evaluates the landscape sensitivity of a historic district in Hangzhou from three major aspects: ecological, visual, and cultural which are further broken down into multiple fields. The GIS is used to process the spatial data and visualize the sensitivity map. The study area is evaluated in each dimension then aggregated in a weighted summation to present the overall sensitivity distribution in space. Based on the evaluation, this paper proposes several suggestions for the future conservation of the study area. 

Based on my review, the followings need more work and consideration:

1. The biggest concern to me is the academic contribution and novelty of this work. I would suggest the author to do a better job explaining this. What are the previous related work and what research gap this paper tries to fill in?  Method-wise, to me, it mainly utilizes the tools in the commercial GIS software. Finding-wise, what is the outstanding findings that previous related work did not spot?   

2. I would suggest the authors to significantly improve the writing and structuring of the paper. 

(1) There are several places I feel not a formal way of the academic writing. For example, the abstract is structured as “(1) Background: … (2) Methods: … (3) Results… (4) Conclusions: …”, which is not a formal way of doing the abstract. The authors could check the abstracts of other papers as an example. Another example is Section 2.1 where the authors lists all data and links. This could be done in better way such as put in the appendices or providing data sources in footnotes, instead of a standalone section. 

(2) There are many ArcGIS tool specific operational steps not necessary to include in the paper. And when the authors explain which tools they use and how they do that, there are many incomplete sentence in the paper. Just to list a few examples: 

Lines 158 “Draw sensitivity maps of the study area for each secondary assessment factor in ArcGIS” 

Lines 177 - 180 “Firstly, draw 14 types of POI density maps. To be specific, import the coordinates of 14 types of POI into ArcGIS. Then choose "Spatial Analyst Tools"-"Density Analysis"-"Kernel Density" in ArcToolbox and open the “Kernel Density” dialog box to input the data [17]. In this way, 14 POI density maps are drawn. Secondly, take a questionnaire survey for residents and tourists. “

(3) Is Table 1 necessary to have, it seems the information is included in Figure 1. 

3. The section 2.3.1 seems not necessary to me. I understand this is provided to show why the study area is picked. But honest speaking, the validity of the survey with 54 samples is not clear in the current version. For example, how the survey is done, who are the survey participants, are there any selection bias, etc. I think Section 2.3.2 explains the reason of the study area selection, so the section 2.3.1 could be unnecessary unless there is something that the authors particularly wants to point out for discussion. 

This is discussed in the overall comments. 

Reviewer 4 Report

The work was well designed and the paper is solid.
The topic is relevant. The authors highlight there can be different approaches more appropriate for other contexts but in my opinion what they present can be a good baseline for similar studies.

The introduction touches the important points.
The methods seem appropriate and the whole section is well designed in a way that simplifies what, at first, could be different to understand.
The results section gain from visual support provided by the maps.
The same is true for the discussion section, which is also based on the correlation of landscape sensitivity assessment factors.
After a thorough discussion the conclusions are expectedly short and to the point but I think this final section could be slightly improved.

I made some comments in the pdf, regarding particular aspects I think that need to be improved.

Best regards.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf