GIS-Based Assessment of the Potential for Treated Wastewater Reuse in Agricultural Irrigation: A Case Study in Northern Italy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The paper entitled “GIS-based assessment of the potential for treated wastewater  reuse in agricultural irrigation: a case study in Northern Italy” deals with an innovative GIS-based model to assess the potential for treated wastewater reuse in agricultural irrigation. The topic of the paper is of interest for the journal “Sustainability” of MDPI editor. The paper is well written and could be accepted after some minor revisions as follows:

-          The units of measure should me checked and be in the international system (be carefulle when using “Km” in place of “km” or “Kw” in place of “kW”)

-          The english form is generally good but a deeper proofreading is necessare since many missprints are still present

-          Figures need a better quality, some of the are very poor (figure 2, figure 5, figure 7)

Kind Regards

Author Response

General comments to reviewers

Dear reviewers, firstly, we would like to thank you for your interest in reviewing our manuscript. Then, we would like to thank you also for your contribution to improve the quality and the understanding of our work thanks your very useful suggestions. We hope that our answers clarified your important questions.

 

Specific comments to reviewers

 

Reviewer #1:

The paper entitled “GIS-based assessment of the potential for treated wastewater reuse in agricultural irrigation: a case study in Northern Italy” deals with an innovative GIS-based model to assess the potential for treated wastewater reuse in agricultural irrigation. The topic of the paper is of interest for the journal “Sustainability” of MDPI editor. The paper is well written and could be accepted after some minor revisions as follows:

1. The units of measure should me checked and be in the international system (be carefulle when using “Km” in place of “km” or “Kw” in place of “kW”)

Thanks for your note. All the units have been corrected according to the SI.

2. The english form is generally good but a deeper proofreading is necessare since many missprints are still present

Thanks for your note. The manuscript was carefully checked for any errors.

3. Figures need a better quality, some of the are very poor (figure 2, figure 5, figure 7)

Thanks for your comment. All the figures have now a higher resolution.

Reviewer 2 Report

This work reported the use of geographic information systems to assess the potential for treated wastewater reuse in agricultural irrigation in Northern Italy. The manuscript was well organized and presented. It was concluded that the reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation purposes in agriculture could help to mitigate water scarcity events. Overall, I would support the publication of the manuscript with only a very minor revision.

1. Please consider if the full name of GIS (Geographic Information systems) should be supplied in the Title.

Author Response

General comments to reviewers

Dear reviewers, firstly, we would like to thank you for your interest in reviewing our manuscript. Then, we would like to thank you also for your contribution to improve the quality and the understanding of our work thanks your very useful suggestions. We hope that our answers clarified your important questions.

 

Specific comments to reviewers

Reviewer #2:

This work reported the use of geographic information systems to assess the potential for treated wastewater reuse in agricultural irrigation in Northern Italy. The manuscript was well organized and presented. It was concluded that the reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation purposes in agriculture could help to mitigate water scarcity events. Overall, I would support the publication of the manuscript with only a very minor revision.

1. Please consider if the full name of GIS (Geographic Information systems) should be supplied in the Title..

Many thanks for your suggestion. We considered it but decided not to report the full name since we believe that GIS is a recognized tool worldwide. We think that its acronym in the title makes it more concise and helps to focus on the purpose of this study.

Reviewer 3 Report

The abstract should be written in third person, present tense. You use simple past tense, please fix it.

Using the modal verb, might, in the conclusion part (lines 17 & 20) of the abstract could be wrong. The main difference between ‘could’ and ‘might’ is that ‘could’ is used to talk about something that is possible or has a great possibility of happening, whereas ‘might’ is used when there are few possibilities of occurrence of an event. You can use ‘might’ if you are not sure about the outcomes of the research! If it is not the case, please fix it.

Please provide proper citations for lines 42, 43 and 44.

Please add at least one figure to show for example the statistics in the introduction. It can help to increase the readability of the manuscript and make the manuscript more interesting for readers.

I believe the manuscript suffers from a lack of proper literature review. Please mention the most important works in this area, especially in recent years. Please do this properly because without it your manuscript is incomplete. The exact place of literature review in your manuscript is after line 83.

Please delete lines 89, 90 and 91 with their citations (since this tool has been intensively used and integrated into almost every discipline to solve complex problems [38–43] and it represents powerful solution to real-world problems [44,45].) because it is unnecessary; or you can add them to your literature review. In this paragraph, you should mention your contribution.

Please change the title of subsection 2.1 to ‘Case study’.

Please justify the difference between the per capita wastewater production in the treatment plants mentioned in Table 3. I calculated per capita wastewater production according to data provided in table 3 and I got very different numbers from 97 L/day for Cesena WWTP to 172 L/day for Forlì and 243 L/day for Piavestina. Please describe this difference and also compare it to other investigations for justification.

Please add a section and discuss the environmental benefits of reusing water and recovering nutrients throughout your study. I strongly recommend that you use Sustainable Development Goals Assessment for this means. Please add a paragraph to the result and discussion section and discuss the benefit achieved by implementing the proposed method for irrigation. You should add proper citations for this section you can use the following studies as an example especially if you want to use Sustainable Development Goals Assessment method.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119587

https://doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures7070088

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114794

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiec.2022.01.002

As you mentioned the wastewater is conveyed through open channels to the receiving water bodies. Please specify the mentioned water bodies.

Please specify the thresholds (A, B, C and D) for E. Coli, BOD5 and TSS according to EU regulations.

Add suggestions for future research in the conclusion.

I recommend that you add a section to the introduction and mention the different environmental beneficial applications of GIS. Here are some different articles that use GIS for different reasons. These are just examples you can use this or simply search and find other relevant studies.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.01.061

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18532-4

 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-022-00638-9

Author Response

General comments to reviewers

Dear reviewers, firstly, we would like to thank you for your interest in reviewing our manuscript. Then, we would like to thank you also for your contribution to improve the quality and the understanding of our work thanks your very useful suggestions. We hope that our answers clarified your important questions.

 

Specific comments to reviewers

Reviewer #3:

1. The abstract should be written in third person, present tense. You use simple past tense, please fix it.

Thanks for you note. The abstract has been checked and modified. However, the authors deem necessary the use of simple past tense since the abstract reports what authors did during the research period.

2. Using the modal verb, might, in the conclusion part (lines 17 & 20) of the abstract could be wrong. The main difference between ‘could’ and ‘might’ is that ‘could’ is used to talk about something that is possible or has a great possibility of happening, whereas ‘might’ is used when there are few possibilities of occurrence of an event. You can use ‘might’ if you are not sure about the outcomes of the research! If it is not the case, please fix it.

Thanks for your important note. The modal verbs have been checked within the abstract section as well as throughout the text.

3. Please provide proper citations for lines 42, 43 and 44.

Thanks for you note. Citations have been provided.

4. Please add at least one figure to show for example the statistics in the introduction. It can help to increase the readability of the manuscript and make the manuscript more interesting for readers.

Thanks for you note. Statistics in the introduction concerns, among other parameters, treated wastewater percentages, freshwater availability and air temperature. After a deep study of the statistics that have been reported in the literature, the authors decided not to include any figure into the introduction section since the numbers reported do not refer to a strict category and they vary a lot depending on the region or time period considered.

5. I believe the manuscript suffers from a lack of proper literature review. Please mention the most important works in this area, especially in recent years. Please do this properly because without it your manuscript is incomplete. The exact place of literature review in your manuscript is after line 83.

Thanks for your suggestion. More references have been included, for example it was underlined how wide is the use of the GIS tool where the work by Gheibi et al. and Erfani et al. were cited.

6. Please delete lines 89, 90 and 91 with their citations (since this tool has been intensively used and integrated into almost every discipline to solve complex problems [38–43] and it represents powerful solution to real-world problems [44,45].) because it is unnecessary; or you can add them to your literature review. In this paragraph, you should mention your contribution.

Thanks for your suggestion. Our review literature has been updated. The part that the reviewer is referring to was moved to a more appropriate place within the same section (see lines 83-88).

7. Please change the title of subsection 2.1 to ‘Case study’.

Thanks for the suggestion. The title has been modified.

8. Please justify the difference between the per capita wastewater production in the treatment plants mentioned in Table 3. I calculated per capita wastewater production according to data provided in table 3 and I got very different numbers from 97 L/day for Cesena WWTP to 172 L/day for Forlì and 243 L/day for Piavestina. Please describe this difference and also compare it to other investigations for justification.

Thanks for your comment. We think that getting different values for per capita wastewater production is correct. Population equivalent is used to calculate wastewater treatment plant capacity, considering also theoretical values. However, the actual water consumption per capita is not equal to the theoretical one. This can justify the difference in treated wastewater production for each WWTPs. In addition, it should be noted that this part of Italy is a popular summer touristic resort and therefore the yearly inflow to some WWTPs is highly dependent on the number of tourists. 

9. Please add a section and discuss the environmental benefits of reusing water and recovering nutrients throughout your study. I strongly recommend that you use Sustainable Development Goals Assessment for this means. Please add a paragraph to the result and discussion section and discuss the benefit achieved by implementing the proposed method for irrigation. You should add proper citations for this section you can use the following studies as an example especially if you want to use Sustainable Development Goals Assessment method.

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119587
• https://doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures7070088
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114794
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiec.2022.01.002

Thanks for your suggestion. The importance of nutrient recovery as well as of using SDG assessment method for this means has been highlighted in the revised version of the manuscript (lines 351-358).

10. As you mentioned the wastewater is conveyed through open channels to the receiving water bodies. Please specify the mentioned water bodies.

Thanks for you note. Some example of water bodies has been reported in the revised version of the manuscript (lines 275).

11. Please specify the thresholds (A, B, C and D) for E. Coli, BOD5 and TSS according to EU regulations.

Thanks for your note. We have reported the information suggested (see lines 302 and 320).

12. Add suggestions for future research in the conclusion.

Thanks, suggestions have been included in the conclusions section.

13. I recommend that you add a section to the introduction and mention the different environmental beneficial applications of GIS. Here are some different articles that use GIS for different reasons. These are just examples you can use this or simply search and find other relevant studies.

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.01.061
• https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18532-4
• https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-022-00638-9

Thanks for your suggestion. The introduction section was modified accordingly as already explained in the comment 6.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

In my opinion the manuscript can be accepted in this journal.