A Model for Fire Departments’ Performance Assessment in Portugal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

the article is well researched and executed.

the theory needs, however,  demonstration for application for the present case not generalities, please.

What are the weighted parameters for input and output .

Explain , please, all DEAs ( Data Envelopment analysis) that are needed.

A table with explanation of abbreviations is necessary.

Comparison with similar studies in USA and Australia would be useful.

What linear programming program is used?

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We would like to thank the reviewers very much for reviewing the article and for all the comments and suggestions that contributed to the improvement of the article. We appreciate the hard work you have done and want to acknowledge your tremendous contribution. We hope that we have responded to all comments and made all changes accordingly. Thank you very much.

Below are the answers (in italics) to each comment. In the text, to facilitate the revision of the article, all changes were marked in blue.

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Yours faithfully,

The Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is evident, and the methodology is acceptable. Some minor suggestions are as below:

 

1.      Significant findings can briefly state in the abstracts.

2.      What’s your methodology from the others? If the same, do you have any comments for further study or SBM?

3.      Typos of SBM is found on Page 9 (It stated SMB). Please add the page number and line number.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We would like to thank the reviewers very much for reviewing the article and for all the comments and suggestions that contributed to the improvement of the article. We appreciate the hard work you have done and want to acknowledge your tremendous contribution. We hope that we have responded to all comments and made all changes accordingly. Thank you very much.

Below are the answers (in italics) to each comment. In the text, to facilitate the revision of the article, all changes were marked in yellow.

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Yours faithfully,

The Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Some content needs to be revised or explained before publication:

1. In the section of 1 Introduction, efficient services are needs to further be explained in this paper. Is the definition reducing casualties, the number of fire accidents, or other meanings? Which one needs to be explained first.

2. Some of the reference materials in some countries were published for more than ten years. More updates are necessary.

3. In the section of Recommendation 1, why the number of water hydrants in FD's jurisdiction areas is one of the suggested inputs in GFDPAF needs to be further explained.

4. In the section of Data gathering stage, I don't understand why only 7,038 fire incident records that happened in 2020 were used as analysis data. Please explain further.

5. In the section of Recommendation 6, it is a good insight that the authors emphasized the cost of prevention activities. The efficient management of fire safety can effectively reduce the number of fire incidents. The authors are encouraged to describe more emphasis this point in the Conclusion.

6. Some rough analysis can be carried out according to the population level in Table 1. For example, regions of 3 or 5 population sizes are divided to show what kind of region sizes have lower values on FD efficiency.

7. The values in Table 2 indicated that financial and technical resources are important factors affecting FD efficiency. Please add explanation in the paper if there is any minimum value data for reference.

8. In the section of the conclusion, the authors are encouraged to explain the reasons for the inefficiencies as a reference for improvement.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

We would like to thank the reviewers very much for reviewing the article and for all the comments and suggestions that contributed to the improvement of the article. We appreciate the hard work you have done and want to acknowledge your tremendous contribution. We hope that we have responded to all comments and made all changes accordingly. Thank you very much.

Below are the answers (in italics) to each comment. In the text, to facilitate the revision of the article, all changes were marked in green.

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Yours faithfully,

The Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

please insert list of abbreviations after the abstract together with a list of symbols.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been revised according to my comments. No further comments.