Mapping Welfare: Location Determining Techniques and Their Potential for Managing Cattle Welfare—A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper has reviewed different localization/location determing techniques including GNSS, UWB, RFID, WSN, computer vision and their use in animal welfare monitoring.  The paper is interesting and requires the following revisions:

1. It is a review paper - please add '- A Review' at the end of the title.

2. Please discuss the possible ways how to improve the performances using multi-sensors and their fusion, i.e. multi-sensor fusion/multi-sensor data fusion.

3. Please include the localization/location determining techniques using IMU sensors for managing the cattle welfare.  

4.  Please elaborate the 'Conclusion' of the paper as it is too short.  For example, the authors may add a paragraph including the future directions. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We thank you for your constructive and helpful feedback. We incorporated your suggested revisions in our final article:

1. '- A Review' has been added to the title
2. A section has been added to the discussion on how performance could be improved using sensor- and/or data fusion with for example the accurate movement and relative position measurement by an IMU.
3.  See point 2
4. We elaborated the conclusion by adding the current situation and future directions. 

With kind regards, Gerben Hofstra

Reviewer 2 Report

General Comment

The current manuscript effectively reviewed the use of location determining technologies as a welfare tool for cattle. The authors described the challenges and opportunity for the application of these technology at livestock farms. The manuscript was enjoyable to read and easy to follow. The comparative analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the reviewed technologies was quite engaging.

Some of the strengths are listed below

·         The authors presented the details of the precision technologies in a very simple and easily understandable way. Even a novice person will be able to recognize the concepts and ideas.  

·         The authors effectively summarized different types of tools for location monitoring including GNSS, UWB, RFID, WSN, and computer vision. This information will help the farmers to choose the tools according to their needs.

Only a small suggestion.

Line 263: Table 1. Title is somewhat confusing. Please rephrase it for clarity.

I really appreciate the authors for writing a concise review on this topic.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for your kind review and helpful suggestion. We have rephrased to title of table 1. for clarity and have mended a few minor inconsistencies in the text in the process.

With kind regards, Gerben Hofstra