A Dual-Stage Attention-Based Vehicle Speed Prediction Model Considering Driver Heterogeneity with Fuel Consumption and Emissions Analysis
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn this work, authors explore a dual-stage attention vehicle speed prediction model considering driver heterogeneity and its fuel consumption and emission analysis. The research scenarios and scientific issues are meaningful and interesting, and is indeed in the frontier of research in the field. However, the author needs to address the following comments and make appropriate revisions to the manuscript.
(1) What is the implication as well as the innovation of this research?
(2) How can you select the eight driver following driving characteristics influencing factors? What’s the foundation about these?
(3) Some of the images (e.g. figure 7) in the article are unclear.
(4) The paper lacks an overall framework diagram to describe the content of the paper.
(5) Present the results in the conclusion section in the form of bullets instead of numbers.
(6) Some minor English errors exist, including page 2 line 58-60, page 2 line 77-85 (Regarding the issue of driver classification. Suggest unifying the number format in English), page 6 line 243-244 (the abbreviation rules are misused), page 8 line 273-277 (incorrect use of punctuation, “,” should be corrected as “;” between the introduction of each variable) and others, which could easily be addressed when verifying the proofs.
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments, please find the resopnses in detail in the acttachment file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors-
This paper, "A dual-stage attention vehicle speed prediction model considering driver heterogeneity and its fuel consumption and emission analysis," presents a significant contribution to vehicle speed prediction. However, there are areas needing refinement for suitability in the Sustainability journal:
- Abstract: Enhance clarity in summarizing key findings and their sustainability implications.
- Introduction: Strengthen the connection between your research and sustainability goals, emphasizing environmental, social, and economic aspects.
- Introduction: Provide critical insights on cited papers, highlighting how your approach addresses existing drawbacks and contributes to the field.
- Methodology: Clarify how your methods contribute to sustainability, linking technical details with sustainable outcomes.
- Methodology: Condense content for clarity, introducing your framework effectively, possibly with diagrams to illustrate model functionality.
- Results and Discussion: Present results more straightforwardly, focusing on their implications for sustainability in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).
- Results and Discussion: Compare with alternative models, employing statistical tests to validate the superiority of your approach.
- Conclusion: Develop a comprehensive conclusion that encapsulates the study's sustainability impact.
Overall, the technical rigor of your paper is commendable. However, a more explicit connection to sustainability and improved clarity in the presentation are needed to align with the journal's focus.
Minor editing is required. The paper is generally well-written but could benefit from minor language refinements.
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments, please find the resopnses in detail in the acttachment file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors\This study addresses heterogeneous drivers as the object, based on deep learning, model prediction, and other methods, to realize effective speed prediction and the impact of traffic fuel consumption and emission. It is a vital investigation area, and this work makes a crucial contribution. However, there are some improvements to be made:
1) The abstract does not describe the work in enough way.
2) It is necessary to verify the article template for correct citations.
3) Why was it chosen the LSTM cells as a nonlinear activation function?
4) It is not clarified the discussion about the figure 9; why the 3 datasets were better?
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments, please find the resopnses in detail in the acttachment file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGeneral:
- At paragraph 2.1 Driver classification, please check the third sentence, where it appears twice the same negative correlation, while the domains of definition are different [-1,0), respectively (0, -1].
- Some ideas are repeated in the text: “ … and the value of its error is the largest in comparison. The error value is also relatively the largest.”
- The article extension, in this moment, appears to be too large, and the numerous types of algorithms used during the description of the approach behind this research makes the reader follow with difficulty the development of the methodology. I recommend reducing the total length of the article with 1-2 pages and to try concentrating and synthetizing the main ideas.
- It is a good point that the authors introduced the limitations of the model they used at the final part of the article, because in the real world, indeed, there are, beside the elements that make drivers different and allow for clustering them in three categories, a lot of other factors that induce a large diversity also in the categories themselves, such as the vehicles dimensions, inertia, road surface condition, weather condition, visibility, age of drivers and their trust in vehicles capabilities, etc.
- The authors shall emphasize more the relevance of their study in the management of traffic – such as the possible implication of such calculations in determining the most appropriate signaling timing at traffic junctions, and the impact on the overall estimation of the network level of service in terms of traffic flowing. It is correct that the study can improve environmental emissions predicting, but I think this should also be emphasized with an estimation, for example on junction signaling (and network LoS) prediction impacts.
- Again, another area where some more clarifications should be made is regarding the amount of processing power and time required to train the models and to obtain significant results. Please also provide some ideas in this regard, too.
- Please also check text spacing in the References section.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNo major issues on English detected. However, please check again too long phrases, and try to reduce the overall length of the article, to make it more compact and easier understandable.
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments, please find the resopnses in detail in the acttachment file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn the present manuscript, the authors study the impact of driver heterogeneity on traffic flow speed prediction under car-following conditions. However, I will comment on some aspects to improve the quality of the article, and the suggested changes must be highlighted:
- The authors must correctly write the acronyms, as they did on line 8. This error must be repaired in each acronym written in the article.
- Authors must add related works linking traffic prediction and the different techniques other authors have carried out. So, I suggest adding the following:
-- Zambrano-Martinez, J.L.; Calafate, C.T.; Soler, D.; Cano, J.-C.; Manzoni, P. Modeling and Characterization of Traffic Flows in Urban Environments. Sensors 2018, 18, 2020. doi: 10.3390/s18072020
-- Asgharizadeh, E.; Jooybar, S.; Mahdiraji, H.A.; Garza-Reyes, J.A. A Novel Travel Time Estimation Model for Modeling a Green Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem in Food Supply Chain. Sustainability 2022, 14, 8633. doi: 10.3390/su14148633
- Authors must correctly write the verb tenses corresponding to each Section.
- Authors must not write with Phrasal Verbs in a scientific article.
- Subsection 3.1 does not have any written paragraph.
- Figure 7 does not have the corresponding unit on the ordinate and abscissa axes.
- The legend of Figure 7 must not be outside the image.
- Figure 7 shows Subfigures that cannot be observed in detail, so the authors must extract these subfigures for better visualization.
- The authors have not commented or presented on the traffic flow models and their classifications.
- The authors do not present the experimental scenario, much less its parameters.
- The authors must convert from m/s to km/h for greater ease of understanding for the reader.
- The authors need to detail what the Origin-Destination Matrix was to perform the experiments and the number of vehicles they have simulated within the scenario.
- Figures 14 to 16 do not have the corresponding unit on their axes.
- Figures 17 and 18 must be larger to obtain a better visualization.
- The authors must consider that some Figures use different units, such as meters for speed and fuel consumption in kilometers. It is necessary to write to the same drive.
- The authors must present the atmospheric pollutants they evaluate in the environmental impact.
- The authors do not have a Conclusion Section. It is necessary to present a Conclusion Section different from the Discussion Section. Furthermore, future works should be written in the Conclusion Section.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageIn the present manuscript, the authors study the impact of driver heterogeneity on traffic flow speed prediction under car-following conditions. However, I will comment on some aspects to improve the quality of the article, and the suggested changes must be highlighted:
- The authors must correctly write the acronyms, as they did on line 8. This error must be repaired in each acronym written in the article.
- Authors must add related works linking traffic prediction and the different techniques other authors have carried out. So, I suggest adding the following:
-- Zambrano-Martinez, J.L.; Calafate, C.T.; Soler, D.; Cano, J.-C.; Manzoni, P. Modeling and Characterization of Traffic Flows in Urban Environments. Sensors 2018, 18, 2020. doi: 10.3390/s18072020
-- Asgharizadeh, E.; Jooybar, S.; Mahdiraji, H.A.; Garza-Reyes, J.A. A Novel Travel Time Estimation Model for Modeling a Green Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem in Food Supply Chain. Sustainability 2022, 14, 8633. doi: 10.3390/su14148633
- Authors must correctly write the verb tenses corresponding to each Section.
- Authors must not write with Phrasal Verbs in a scientific article.
- Subsection 3.1 does not have any written paragraph.
- Figure 7 does not have the corresponding unit on the ordinate and abscissa axes.
- The legend of Figure 7 must not be outside the image.
- Figure 7 shows Subfigures that cannot be observed in detail, so the authors must extract these subfigures for better visualization.
- The authors have not commented or presented on the traffic flow models and their classifications.
- The authors do not present the experimental scenario, much less its parameters.
- The authors must convert from m/s to km/h for greater ease of understanding for the reader.
- The authors need to detail what the Origin-Destination Matrix was to perform the experiments and the number of vehicles they have simulated within the scenario.
- Figures 14 to 16 do not have the corresponding unit on their axes.
- Figures 17 and 18 must be larger to obtain a better visualization.
- The authors must consider that some Figures use different units, such as meters for speed and fuel consumption in kilometers. It is necessary to write to the same drive.
- The authors must present the atmospheric pollutants they evaluate in the environmental impact.
- The authors do not have a Conclusion Section. It is necessary to present a Conclusion Section different from the Discussion Section. Furthermore, future works should be written in the Conclusion Section.
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments, please find the resopnses in detail in the acttachment file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI have reviewed your responses to my comments and the subsequent revisions made to the manuscript. I am pleased to acknowledge that you have addressed all the points raised thoroughly and effectively. The improvements, particularly in clarity and sustainability implications, significantly enhance the quality of your work. I commend your efforts in refining the manuscript based on the feedback provided. As a minor suggestion, I recommend paying close attention to the English grammar, especially in the tables. Attention to details like spacing and consistency in formatting can further polish the manuscript. This minor revision will ensure that the quality of your presentation matches your research's high standards.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageI advise a minor revision regarding the English grammar in the tables. A meticulous review for spacing and consistency could enhance the readability and professionalism of the manuscript.
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThanks to the authors for performing the changes suggested. Before publication, it is necessary to check a minor revision of the English spelling.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThanks to the authors for performing the changes suggested. Before publication, it is necessary to check a minor revision of the English spelling.
Author Response
We have revised our paper according to reviewers' comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
