Considerations and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for the Installation of Collocated Permanent GNSS and SAR Infrastructures for Continuous Space-Based Monitoring of Natural Hazards
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper presents solid experimental research on considerations and multi-criteria decision analysis for the installation of permanent infrastructures including a permanent CORS and two corner reflectors.
The experiment setup and results are clearly presented in the paper. The technical content is worthwhile for future campaign studies and it’s worthwhile to be published after addressing the following concerns.
General
- Sometimes you use ‘Sigma0’ and sometimes ‘Sigma Nougt’ in the paper. It’s better to use one of them for the entire manuscript.
- Usually there should be space between the sentence and the citation ‘[x]’; and space between a numerical value and its unit. Please double check these.
- Equations need to have a number
- Some ‘Figure’ labels are highlighted Bold in the manuscript, while some are not. Please make them consistent.
Specific
Page 1, Line 31: Please provide full expression of ‘SAR’
Page 3, Line 113: Extra space before ‘e.g.’
Page 7, Line 256: it’s not clear ‘3, 15 cm/pixel’ corresponds to which product. Please clarify
Page 7, Line 270: These section labels are misleading ‘1, 2, 3, 4’. Please consider an alternative way
Page 11, Figure 9 and 10: Please add color bar to these plots
Page 13, Line 424: The definition of pairwise comparison matrix is not very clear to readers who are new to this topic. Maybe an example can help.
Page 13, Line 433: Why is left side ‘{??????}’?
Page 13, Line 434: What’s the definition of RI?
Page 19, Figure 15: What’s the meaning of different colors in (b)?
Page 21, Line 646 and 650: Please give definition of ‘a’ and ‘A’
Page 22, Line 661: Is there any explanation of the difference between values (in 4th column) at different sites?
Page 22, Line 665: Lack of ‘.’
Page 24, Figure 24: The flow chart is very nice. Only one minor suggestion, maybe use one parallelogram for ‘DTM’ and split two lines for ‘Aspect’ and ‘Slope’
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
the manuscript is well-written and show in detail the multi-criteria decision analysis for the installation of permanent infrastructures for continuous space-based monitoring of natural hazards. I suggest the manuscript as technical note and minor revision before the publication in Remote Sensing journal.
Very minor spell checks are required as:
- Line 52 - “…Cyprus. Up to…”
- Line 178 - “Line of Sight (LOS)”. Remove the acronym in line 218
Please add a sentence/paragraph of the importance to use/combine the CRs with the GNSS.
The discussion are more similar to conclusion. Please revise the Discussion session and add a short conclusion. Another possibility, above all considering the possibility to move the manuscript to a technical note, is to merge discussions and conclusions in a single section.
Please, some figures are too small, consider enlarging them (e.g., Figure 3 and Figure 4). Since the number of figures is high, check if all of them are relevant or some of them can be removed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The article concerns an interesting issue related to the optimal location of investments. The presented approach has the potential to extend to other localization issues as well. Unfortunately, the article still requires a lot of work, it is written chaotically. Detailed comments below:
1. Section 1. Introduction: "In the current literature regarding the co-location of GNSS / SAR infrastructures, there exist no specific guidelines for the determination of the most suitable locations…" - such a statement should be preceded by an analysis of the current literature. Additionally, there are no detailed guidelines, but so far methods of identifying locations have been used. How does the proposed method differ from others? Do the earlier ones have limitations?
2. Section 2. Materials and Methods: "The criteria were categorized and classified based on the importance of one over anothe" - how were the criteria categorized? How was the validity of the criteria assessed? Please explain here.
3. Section 2.1. Site Selection Requirements: "All the candidate sites should be located in government control areas (parcels), ..." - proposed locations under the CyCLOPS project? It is very ambiguously written by the Authors.
4. Sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 contain extensive technical descriptions, mostly unnecessary. One gets the impression that this is a technical description of the project and not a scientific article.
5. Section 2.2. Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) (methodology) does not include a methodology for making decisions in accordance with MCDA. The authors presented the criteria on the basis of which they make location decisions and the method of obtaining them.
6. Section 2.2.3. Analytic Hierarchy Process analysis (AHP) "The analysis was performed for the criteria (see Table 6) ..." in the earlier sections. The authors outlined seven criteria that influence decision making. Why are they now limited to four? What will it be based on? Have they carried out any analyzes allowing for such limitations?
7. Table 6. Pairwise comparison matrix for the criteria weights with respect to the goal - what are the goals for? It is not clear, the table shows the criteria rather than the analyzed goals.
8. Section 4. Discussion - the flowchart from Figure 23 should be included in section 2. Materials and Methods, which should be expanded to include a description of the methods and materials. Especially that the approach described by the authors is very complicated and not easy to re-implement.
9. The article should end with the section Conclusions. What the Authors write in Abstract “. The first results demonstrate that the collocation of SAR and GNSS permanent infrastructures utilizing a holistic criteria-based approach is successful and complies with all the literature's requirements. " there is no confirmation in the article.
10. No numbering of formulas. Variables in the text and formulas should be in italics. Incorrect matrix editing markup.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Summary The paper contributes to the gradual finding of suitable criteria and procedures for solving automated multi-criteria analysis of monitoring surface changes and movement tendencies in high-risk areas with an increased degree of threat. The unification of monitoring movement trends using GNSS, SAR and other technologies is the goal of many teams. In this respect, the paper characterizes well the need and possibilities of the solution. However, the paper is detailed and requires shortening and adding at least a sample of application. The quality is good except of Figure 24, which has poor resolution (maybe if it is placed on the whole page will be suit ??)
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors made the necessary adjustments. I recommend the article for publication. Please pay attention to editing the article, e.g .: Fig. 3b - too small font for axle descriptions.
