The Association between Vessel Departures and Air Pollution in Helsinki Port Area 2016–2021

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

The topic of the article is current and important. The article gives specific data on the volume of emissions from ships in the Helsinki port area in the analyzed period.

This is not a new approach to the problem, but it presents diligently performed engineering work. The methodology is correct. External factors that may interfere with measurements from ships, such as the presence of power plants, have been indicated.

* The work can be shortened to demonstrate the main thesis of the article by limiting the presentation of the results.

*The results can be presented, for example only for two port terminals.

*The literature review is adequate.

*The drawings and tables don’t raise objections.

Best regards.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We appreciate your work and effort in taking the time to read and evaluate our manuscript. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank you for your valuable input in making our manuscript more suitable for publishing.

As suggested, we will shorten the manuscript and move the Appendix content to a Supplement.

Again, thank you very much for your review.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper describes the association between vessel departures and air pollution in Helsinki port area 2016–2021. The contents and results are interesting and a useful scientific contribution. Some suggestions are recommended to improve the quality of work:

- increase the review of the available literature

- cite these works:

Campisi et al., 2022 - Locally integrated partnership as a tool to implement a Smart Port Management Strategy: The case of the port of Ravenna (Italy)

Marinello et al., 2021- Sustainability of logistics infrastructures: operational and technological alternatives to reduce the impact on air quality

 

- describe the port terminal air quality sampling locations by adding a table after figure 1

- paragraph 3.6 would be better called "summary of the results", or "summary discussion"

- chapter 4 should be called "Conclusion"

- Appendix A could become a separate file as "Supplementary Materials"

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to thank you very much for your effort and help to make our manuscript more suitable for publishing.

We found the article and conference proceeding you suggested very insightful. We added the following sentence to the Discussion with citations to these references: "To overcome this task in the most efficient way, the feasibility of both shore power connection and energy storage on board should be considered carefully. Modelling different options with appropriate cost-benefit analysis could help in finding the optimum solution."

As suggested, we changed the title of Section 3.6 to Summary of Results.

We kept the title of Section 4 as Discussion as it is a part where the results and relevance of the study are discussed in light of the Introduction and the research question. I hope that you agree.

Again, many thanks for your efforts towards our manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article titled "The association between vessel departures and air pollution in 2 Helsinki port area 2016-2021". Whose the objective to correlate the emissions of the vessel in its Arrival, berthed, and departure process. Under the assumption of fuel consumption by the EU-MRV. For this, they use multiple linear regression analysis between the meteorological variables, the number of arrivals and departures, and time in the port of the vessels; with the concentration of NO2 and PM2.5. in two moments, all year and only on weekend days

 

However, the manuscript has important aspects to improve before being considered for publication:

 

Major comments:

 

In general, the information presented in the results is repetitive and unclear, the authors must avoid duplicating the information and what is transmitted in the tables must be consistent with what is stated in the text. An example of this is the lack of clarity in the results of the multiple regression, in the table text only shows a linear regression between the vessel and the pollutant. Please clarify and correct. Please add precise information in the Material and Methods and Results section.

 

Another important aspect is the absence of references or scientific technical support for Equation 1 proposed by the authors, without this the only conclusion that they propose and is supported by the results of this equation remains unfounded.

 

Why did the authors from 3.1 to 3.5 raise a specific port and year? Methodologically, this does not have a selection criterion and it is not clear if they are only a representative example of all the years for the same or all the ports. In addition to this, in some cases, they classify by type of vessel and in others not, why?

 

In addition to this, the authors do not physically explain the reasons for the statistical findings, this is observed both in the results section and in the discussion.

 

Point 3.6 called conclusions, is a summary of applying the coefficients from tables 4 to 13 to equation 1, but they are far from being conclusions, in addition to this, lines 485 to 490 do not correspond to the research findings proposal; and Line 502 to 503 is another study that is not confronted.

 

The proposed discussion is poor or scarce, it does not respond to proposing or analyzing the results of the proposed objective. It is important to mention that lines 537-538 propose a new objective that is not addressed in the manuscript. The first lines of the discussion give references that show the possible infeasibility of implementing On-Shore Power Supply or a similar system by the 1st of January of 2023. Finally, the authors acknowledge that the statistical model applied is not reliable to explain the relationship and why they do not explain beyond 20% of the concentrations. What other alternative could be used, is that 20% direct or does it have the implications of meteorological variables?

 

Minor comments:

 

Please check the style of reference in the text,

 

Lines 68 – 83 please summarise the idea both paragraphs speak about SECA but in different pollutant contexts.

 

Please provide the complete information about equation 1 and scientific support for that

 

Lines 172-175 repeat previous information

 

Please check Figure 3 is part of two pages avoid it.

 

Please summarized all figures and results.

 

Please move figures 7, 8 11 and 12 to the annexes.

 

Please add in material and methods the reason sometimes the author made analyzed by kind of vessel and sometimes not.

 

If the information in the annexes is not citable or useful in the main text of the article, please removed it.

 

Please increase the discussion process

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to express our gratitude towards the time and effort you spent reviewing our manuscript. We found your comments highly useful in making our paper more suitable for publishing.

We have edited our manuscript based on the received comments and we have included the edited version in this reply. I hope that you will find the time and will to review the edited version.

Replies to the Major comments:

We edited the paragraph in Section 2 Materials and Methods to include a detailed description of the regression method used with two new references and the linear regression formula. As the scope of the study is to examine the relationship between vessel movement and the measured pollutant concentration, we felt that leaving out the statistical information for each variable and the intercept was correct. The variables used are described in Section 2 and if some were eliminated in the regression, it is described in the results. I hope that you agree.

As described in Section 2, the Helsinki Region Environmental Agency has a mobile measuring unit that is rotated between different port terminals each year. That is also why there is no data for the year 2017 as the mobile unit was stationed at the airport. The selection of different port terminals provided us with a variety of different environments and different vessel types, which we believe contributes to the robustness of our results.

We have added a sentence describing why in some port terminals certain types of ships could be examined in more detail. The reason is that in those terminals they always dock at the same pier.

We don't fully understand what you mean by "physically explaining the statistical findings". However, we have edited the discussion quite a bit to further examine the meaning and possible indications of our findings.

We have changed the title of Section 3.6 to Summary of Findings. Thank you for pointing this out to us.

As mentioned above, we have edited the Discussion a lot and I hope you will find it adequate in explaining our research more in detail.

Replies to the Minor comments:

References are now edited as per the journal policy.

The first paragraph describes the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA) and the second the Nitrogen Emission Control Area (NECA). They are very different regulations even though in force at the same locations. The motivations behind these regulations also vary as explained in the article.

Formulas one and two are now fully explained with corresponding references.

Figure 3 will now fit on one page.

Results are summarised in Section 3.6.

All diagnostic plots are now the Supplement.

Section 2 is edited to further explain why some vessel types were possible to examine further.

Discussion is edited.

Again, we would like to thank you for your hard work and efforts towards our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you very much to the authors for their work, they have answered all my questions and suggestions