Diversified Filtering Mechanism for Evaluation Indicators of Urban Road Renewal Schemes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

While the manuscript provides valuable insights into the evaluation and decision-making processes for urban road renewal projects, there are several areas that require major revisions to enhance clarity and coherence.

1. This manuscript contains complex language and concepts that may be difficult for readers to follow. Consider simplifying the language and structuring the content in a more organized manner to improve readability and comprehension.

2. This manuscript covers a wide range of topics related to urban road renewal evaluation and decision-making. It's important to clarify the primary focus and scope of the study to ensure that the key objectives and findings are effectively communicated to the readers.

3. The methodology employed in the study, particularly the use of the LDA model and text similarity analysis, should be explained in more detail. Provide clear explanations of how these methods were applied and their significance in the context of urban road renewal evaluation.

4. English should be polished.

Addressing these points will significantly strengthen the manuscript, ultimately improving the overall quality and impact of the study.

English should be polished.

Author Response

Please see the  attached revision document for comment's feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is very interesting and addresses a current issue both in terms of science and business. In my opinion, this paper is very well prepared and has a very high citation potential. The structure of the paper is clear and complete. The cited literature is complete and up-to-date. 

The level of detail is consistent, length of sections is balanced, and headings and otherorganizational elements are consistent and marked appropriately.

The text is free of errors in grammar and syntax. A good variety of professional vocabulary is used here. Language flows logically and is clear, understandable, and appropriate for the reader. 

Author Response

Please see the attached revision document for comments feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of the paper is highly relevant from multiple perspectives, both for the particular journal and also in general. The literature review is adequately implemented both in terms of scope and quality. The structure of the paper is clear and logical, the results are backed both by the theoretical description of the provided approach and by well-implemented computational experiments. Based on the previous, overall the paper can be accepted for publication, but before that, some revisions should be made.

1. The format of the manuscript is generally standardized, but in this manuscript, the line spacing of some paragraphs is inconsistent, and the author should carefully adjust it.

2. Some formulas are displayed incorrectly and the formatting is confusing, which affects the readability of the article and should be carefully revised.

3. There are too many tables in the article. For example, the tables in Chapter 4 take up a lot of pages. Can you consider adding some tables as attachments, otherwise it will affect the reading of the article.

The quality of English is good.

Author Response

Please see the attached feedback document for comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Diversified Filtering Mechanism for Evaluation Indicators of Urban Road Renewal Schemes

The authors propose a method for evaluating urban road renewal schemes by incorporating an indicator filtering mechanism based on text similarity between project characteristics and evaluation indicators. The Entropy Weight-TOPSIS method is then applied to make the final decision among the different renewal schemes. This new approach addresses the limitations of the conventional "indicator-based approach", which relies on a fixed evaluation indicator system, requiring the recalculation of all indicators for each decision-making process. While this practice impacts the overall efficiency of scheme evaluation and decision-making, the specifics of how it does so, are not clearly highlighted. The manuscript is written and organized well enough and the contribution is interesting for the novelty of using the LDA model to classify and extract features specific to urban road renewal projects. However, its potential might be limited as the manuscript includes results for only 5 schemes, and it is not guaranteed that this efficiency could be replicated with a larger sample of alternatives. Therefore, I suggest publication if the manuscript is enriched with the following comments.

Minor comments:

1.      The abstract, while comprehensive, could be enhanced by summarizing the key findings and their implications more explicitly, providing the reader with a clear takeaway of the study’s contributions.

Section 1

2.      Pag 2: Please insert the relevant references for the MCDA methods mentioned, such as AHP, Entropy Weight Method, TOPSIS, and VIKOR.

3.      Pag. 2: it would be interesting to specify better which are the “adverse effect in the efficiency of scheme evaluation”.

4.      Pag. 2: What previous research has focused on “innovative weighting methods to mitigate subjectivity and randomness, as well as optimizing ranking”, etc.? Please mention them in the text along with the relevant references to help the reader have a more specific idea of what you are referring to.

5.      Pag. 2: At the end of the Introduction, insert the list of Sections in which the manuscript is organized and provide a brief description of each one. 

Section 2

6.      Pag. 3: Specify, more in detail, how the evaluation and DM processes of urban road renewal programs can be enhanced by extracting thematic features from text data using the theme model. It would be interesting, for instance, to highlight the strengths of the aforementioned model in comparison to others or simply to stress the main features of the theme model.

Section 4

7.      Pag. 5-9: It is suggested to maintain the same order in which you mention the three dimensions of the indicators (i.e., facility renewal, economic renewal, social renewal) throughout the entire manuscript (including Table 1) to avoid confusion in the exposition.

8.      Pag. 10: In Section 4.2.1 Table 2 presents the list of documents extracted from managerial reports and Academic literature. It would be interesting to include a column indicating the total number of documents derived from the Managerial reports and academic literature out of the total 84 documents, providing insights into their distribution across these two data sources.

9.       Pag. 11: It is not entirely clear to me, why Theme 2 and Theme 4 can be merged based on the words you mentioned, i.e. “traffic, traffic volume, widening, lane, and sidewalk”. I expected to find these words respectively in Theme 2 and 4 of Table 3, but the words “traffic and widening” are not present. Perhaps they do not rank among the top 10 keywords shown in Table 3? Please provide a clearer explanation for this aspect.

10.  Pag. 12: Table 4 includes keywords not listed in Table 3, such as “intersection, forecast, rehabilitation, maintenance, and investigation”. I assume they have been used as synonyms for junction, projections, restoration, conservation, and survey, respectively. Please provide further clarification on their usage or consider replacing them with the original terms to prevent confusion for the reader.

11.  Pag 14-15: For Figures 3-4-5-6, it is suggested to maintain the same order as presented in Table 4. Specifically, Fig. 3: should depict “quality enhancement”; Fig. 4 Traffic enhancement, and so forth. Additionally, the text preceding the figures 3-4-5-6 (page 14), should provide a more detailed explanation that the project classification corresponds to the four themes outlined in Table 4.

Section 5

12.  Section 5.2: I assume that the Renewal project of the G15 Jaliu section falls under the theme of “Traffic enhancement”, as indicated in Table 4, rather than “function enhancement”. Therefore, the reference figure for selecting the evaluation indicators in Table 6 with the threshold of 25% is the one at the end of page 14 (ideally Figure 4, but erroneously enumerated as 3). If my understanding is correct, you missed inserting “overhaul of safety facilities” (which appears to have a higher threshold than “performance of road surface” (included among the facility renewal) and “Economic net present value”, which seems to have a higher threshold than “construction cycle” (included among the economic renewal).

In addition, it could be helpful to refer in the text to the previous figure that corresponds to the mentioned threshold for better visualization. Alternatively, consider adding a column in Table 6 indicating the specific threshold for each selected indicator.

Finally, it is suitable for Table 6 to follow the same order of indicators as depicted in Figure 4, to enhance readability and/or comparison.

13.  Table 11 should be renumerated as Table 9 to maintain the sequence, and subsequently, all the following tables.

14.  Please check throughout the entire text for inconsistencies in the term 'Jia Liu' section of Shanghai, as sometimes it is written as a single word and some other times as two words.

Major revisions:

Introduction

1.      In Section 3, you say that the reconstruction project of G15 Jialiu section in Shanghai has been used as a case study to validate and demonstrate the proposed method. It is recommended to anticipate in the Introduction the reasons for selecting this particular case study and outline the motivations behind this choice, such as policy implications or social relevance, which can be further detailed in Section 5.

Section 2

2.      Section 2.2 could be enhanced by incorporating the latest empirical studies that apply multidimensional urban renewal indicators related to sustainability. Provide a more detailed description of these studies. For example, in line 123, where it is mentioned, "studies have also identified specific indicators," it would be beneficial to elucidate which studies these are, outline the primary indicators they utilize, and present the main outcomes obtained with these indicators.

Section 4

3.      Section 4.1: You have categorized the evaluation indicator system into three distinct groups: facility, economic, and social renewal. In Table 1, under the social renewal category, you have included considerations for the environment as a sub-indicator, along with society and culture.

While, on page 9, you justify the incorporation of the environmental aspect within the social renewal by suggesting that factors like atmospheric conditions resulting from renewal projects significantly impact the public’s perception of service quality, I believe that the environment holds such significant importance, especially in recent sustainability discussions, that it deserves recognition as a distinct dimension alongside social, economic, and facility renewal. Therefore, I recommend either maintaining a separate environmental dimension to align with the well-known ESG acronym representing sustainability's environmental, social, and governance aspects or, at the very least, providing stronger justification within the text (with references and so on), for the inclusion of this crucial aspect in the social renewal category.

Section 5

4.      The five renewal schemes are not fully understood from Table 5. Please provide additional descriptions in the accompanying text to enhance overall comprehensibility.

Conclusion

5.      In Section 5.3 and the conclusion, you suggest that through the comparative analysis with the full indicator data, the final ranking of the 5 alternatives, is nearly the same, with the only inconsistency observed for schemes 1 and 2. However, I wonder whether the final ranking obtained between the filtering and not-filtering methods could vary significantly when considering more than 5 schemes, such as more than 20. Therefore, it is recommended to provide in the conclusion more insight into this scenario, either through a practical example or by discussing the main weaknesses and strengths of using this methodology when evaluating more than 5 alternatives.

Author Response

Please see the attached document for the revision comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors answered my questions, and I have no further comment.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have made valuable efforts to clarify the scope and arguments of the paper, rendering it clearer and more comprehensive. In general, I am satisfied with the responses and corresponding revisions made by the authors. Although this method may have limitations regarding the evaluation of five alternatives, the authors propose a new framework to be tested in the future across different scenarios to verify its effectiveness and efficiency in decision-making. Therefore, the paper can also offer a useful method for future studies.