Georeferencing Accuracy Assessment of Historical Aerial Photos Using a Custom-Built Online Georeferencing Tool

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your interesting, useful and relevant work. Is there a link to access the site? 

I included some copy editing comments in the attached draft.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The aim of this paper is collecting data, related to the georeferencing accuracy of the custom-built online tool, and conducting empirical analysis to investigate if the custom-built online georeferencing web application outperforms traditional desktop software programs.

This is an interesting and well-structured paper, including the major sections (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions), as well as several sub-sections. The analysis of all these sections and sub-sections is generally detailed and vague. Moreover, the bibliographic references are sufficient. However, some corrections should be carried out, which will improve the paper. In particular:

General comment: Please, check the entire manuscript for linguistic mistakes (e.g. Lines 8, 10, 12, 14, 150 etc.).

Line 153: The sub-section 2.1 could be merged with the “Introduction” section. Please, apply.

Line 180: Please, add coordinates in the main figure. Please, apply similarly to all figures, if applicable.

Line 239 and 241: Please, provide a brief description in the caption of each Figure.

Line 478: Please rewrite the “Conclusions” section. In the current form this section resembles an abstract. You should mention the major findings of your research and describe them briefly; you could also number them.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript presents a new online tool for the georeferencing of historical aerial photos, and its accuracy assessment in comparison with frequently used gis desktop applications. The research is original and the results well-presented, however the reviewer suggests that the structure of the paper, as well as the bibliographic overview, the methodology, and evaluation of results require improvements and further elaboration in order for the manuscript to be published.

Major Comments

The aims of the research are not stated in the manuscript; this should be a section at the end of the introduction.

The section between lines 33-89 should be abstracted to provide a shorter and more concise overview on the use of aerial photographs. Most of the text’s references come from this section and are not relevant to the discussed topics.

The manuscript is missing a literature review of georeferencing of aerial photos, and tools used to achieve it (including accuracy). Therefore, no references have been provided regarding the central scope of the research.

Section 2.3 concerning the online tool development should better precede sections 2.1 and 2.2.

Since the focus of the manuscript is twofold – that is the development of the tool and the accuracy assessment – the reviewer suggest that section 2.3 is expanded to address in more detail the tool development and its components.

Lines 323-328: It is evident that images of various spatial resolutions can be used as reference. Does the system maintain metadata of the resolution of reference images used? Or, alternatively, can the person who georeferences a historical photo publish information about spatial resolutions and accuracies accompanying the final image?

Lines 437-448: An accuracy evaluation of any georeferencing practice (for photogrammetry, remote sensing, or other application) usually includes both control points, and points that have not been included in the calculation of the transformation, but used for checking the accuracy after the transformation has been applied. Why did the authors not follow this tactic?

Minor Comments

Lines 315-318: The ability to directly web publish may mean that there is no evaluation or control of the geroreferenced images. How do the authors plan to tackle this problem?

Lines 338-340: Can the person who georeferences a historical image with the online tool choose between transformation algorithms?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors in this paper investigate a novel online georeferencing tool for historical aerial images. Overall, the paper is well-written and indeed shows potential for bringing impact to the field. The reviewer has a few comments attached that may be helpful to improve the quality of the paper:

1.      The introduction is quite lengthy with many discussions on the historical aerial images and GCPs for referencing images. On the other hand, the literature review on the topic of online georeferencing is limited to one paragraph by the end of the section (there are a few discussions under Section 2.3). The reviewer wishes to see some improvements in these regards, particularly regarding the contribution of this study.

 

2.      Following Item 1 above, it would be helpful if the authors can add one more section entitled Background (or Related Work). Then the authors could move some of the content in the Introduction to this new section.

 

 

3.      Section 2.3 is the core of this study as it illustrates the methodology of this online tool development. It is not very clear to the reviewer how (heavily) this online tool relies on the existing platform(s), as the authors mentioned a few of them in the writing. It would be beneficial by adding a flowchart upfront to explain the procedure (steps) for the development.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf