Synergies and Potential of Industry 4.0 and Automated Vehicles in Smart City Infrastructure

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

the document has numerous grammatical errors and typos and needs further revision 

 It is recommended to choose the 'review' type and not 'article' for the manuscript. There is no point in starting an abstract by quoting the title or most of it but instead the novelty of the research and possible replicability should be well emphasised 

Many judgments are not supported by adequate recent normative references

Figure 1 should be a table to which more definition detail should be added 

all images should contain reference sources. In fact, it seems clear that all images included in the text either refer to other manuscripts or research 

It is not clear in the concluding section what the benefits and spin-offs of this literature analysis might be for the context treated 

The whole document should be written in the third person singular, avoiding "we...".

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, which we tried to implement according to your ideas. We believe we have succeeded.

The document has gone through a grammar check and we have tried to correct any grammatical errors so that it is in line with the requirements. The paper has also been edited linguistically and has undergone an English edit to make it compliant.

The article type was changed from "article" to "review" in accordance with Reviewer 1's requirement. Similarly, in the abstract of this article, the introduction and conclusion sections have been edited as per the requirements and hence the novelty of the research and possible replicability has been emphasized.

For all the judgments that have been implemented in the article, we have tried to include the necessary references, hence the entire list of references used has been redesigned and modified as per the requirements.

Figure 1 has been modified to be a table, and a more comprehensive description has been added within the description of this table (above the table itself), and at the same time two new columns have also been added to the table to bring the issues of this table closer to the table and to explain the reasons for the data leakage.

All Figures and Images have the source listed below the Figure/Image itself, with a link to the specific page and full citation in accordance with the MDPI standards from which the data for these Figures was drawn provided in the description of the Figure/Image (above the image itself)

The Conclusion section has been extensively edited to highlight the benefits and spin-offs from this literature analysis. All amendments can be seen in the document.

The entire document has been edited by avoiding the use of "we" in the text and has instead been edited to the third person singular.

Thank you

Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The bibliographic study is vast, many bibliographic sources being reviewed and analyzed.

The authors talk about the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies and automated vehicles in the infrastructure of smart cities.

According to bibliographic sources, Industry 4.0 is actually a strategy to improve existing technology. Then it should be analyzed:

-          digitization and exploiting the potential of new technologies

-          internet of things (IoT)

-          Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) / Cloud Computing

Then, in chapter 2 Materials and methods - the applied methods are not seen in the paper.

It is NOT clear from the presentation what the NIS directive represents and NIS 2? Is it the National Institute of Statistics?

The authors talk about smart cities. How many autonomous vehicles are there in Barcelona and Singapore?  Suggestion: a table with their number

"..... The measurements show that Singapore has come to the top of the rankings by effectively utilising technology for urban planning."

And the conclusions are general.

Author Response

Dear reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, which we tried to implement according to your ideas. We believe we have succeeded.

In accordance with your requests, we have added a new chapter to the text, which analyses all the required areas (digitization and exploiting the potential of new technologies, internet of things (IoT),Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) / Cloud Computing) in considerable detail. It not only analyses these areas in general terms, but also describes the relation to the issue of smart cities and tries to find the application penetration and use of these elements.

Chapter 2, Materials and methods, has been edited to show where and how specific methods have been used in the paper. For each method, a general description, procedure and also a subsequent explanation of how the specific method was used in the article has been added.

An explanation of what the abbreviations NIS Directive and NIS 2 Directive mean has been added to the article to make it clear what these abbreviations and names mean.

In accordance with your requests, a clear statistic (graph) on autonomous vehicles in Barcelona and Singapore has been added to the article, together with a detailed description of the statistic, the year-on-year development and a comparison with another country.

The conclusion section has been extensively edited to make the conclusions clear and specific (so as not to be general) while highlighting the benefits and spin-offs of this literature analysis. All amendments can be seen in the document.

Thank you

Authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Page 1. Line 32. In my opinion, the term "crete jungles" is not the most appropriate in a technical article. I suggest using a different phrase.

Page 1. Line 42. I would like to inquire about which studies are being referred to? The authors did not provide any references to the literature.

Page 2. Line 45. Similar question: reduce emissions of what? Do the authors refer to noise or perhaps toxic exhaust components?

Page 3. Line 103. What comparative method did the authors have in mind? Please specify.

Page 15. Line 632. Please explain the term "CNC machines".

General Note: In my opinion, this text adds nothing to the current state of knowledge and is very mediocre, even as a review article. The authors have reviewed the literature and simply described what they read. However, it's difficult to speak of any methodology when it hasn't even been named (see above).

Author Response

Dear reviewer 3,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, which we tried to implement according to your ideas. We believe we have succeeded.

The term "concrete jungles" has been replaced by another term, more suitable for a technical article in accordance with the requirements.

All necessary literature sources have been added so that it is clear to which studies are referred in several places in this article. For all the judgments that have been implemented in the article, we have tried to include the necessary references, so the entire list of references used has been reworked and modified according to the requirements.

Line 56 (originally line 45) has been edited to make it clear what we are referring to and what specific emission reductions were meant in this case.

The specific comparative method that was used was also specified in the article with a specific reference. The whole of Chapter 2, Materials and methods, has been edited to make it clear where and how specific methods were used in the article. For each method, a general description, the procedure, and also a subsequent explanation of how the particular method was used in the article has been added.

The term CNC Machines has been additionally explained in the text. All changes in the text are recorded through the track changes system so it is possible to see where which change was made.

The methodology used in the paper has been supplemented and also the whole of Chapter 2 has been described quite extensively to make it clear what methods, materials and what methodology have been used in the paper. Within our work we wanted to create a comprehensive literature review from the available data and data, as most of the time studies specify to a particular area but do not compare the overall advantages and disadvantages of such integration and do not look at the overall synergistic potential. This paper was intended to review the current state of knowledge and provide a holistic view of the whole issue with a clear summary of all known knowledge, highlighting the synergistic potential as an enriching element of this whole work.

Thank you

Authors

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

the manuscript still has a number of typos and grammatical errors. It is advisable to put reference links related to the sources of the images 

I believe it is not necessary to add a sentence like this " As all the sources, the authors worked with within this paper are publicly available, the 3methods have been clearly described, so other researchers can easily verify and build on our work and replicate it. For example, in the areas of ethical, legal and social aspects. "

It is recommended to better emphasise the novelty of the research that is still not understood when reading this new version of the manuscript.

Perhaps an initial flow chart could explain the steps of the research conducted

With regard to the smart city concept, it is suggested that other aspects related to both urban planning and the evolution of mobility also be included, while adding more bibliographic reference, and therefore we recommend reading the following research works

1)Azzari, M., Garau, C., Nesi, P., Paolucci, M., & Zamperlin, P. (2018). Smart city governance strategies to better move towards a smart urbanism. In Computational Science and Its Applications-ICCSA 2018: 18th International Conference, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, July 2-5, 2018, Proceedings, Part III 18 (pp. 639-653). Springer International Publishing.

2) Pinna, F., Masala, F., & Garau, C. (2017). Urban policies and mobility trends in Italian smart cities. Sustainability, 9(4), 494.

3) Campisi, T., Severino, A., Al-Rashid, M. A., & Pau, G. (2021). The development of the smart cities in the connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) era: From mobility patterns to scaling in cities. Infrastructures, 6(7), 100.

Figure 1 does not appear mentioned in the text and it is probably worth creating a new table in which the authors can also add new rows 

and their references 

Several acronyms were not written in extended form when they first appear in the text,

Please give reasons why the word Smart City is written with capital letters does it refer to a generic term or a particular project? if you ask to mention the project references 

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, which we tried to implement according to your ideas. We believe we have succeeded.

The entire document has been proofread for English language by a third party and corrected for grammatical errors, commas, typos etc.

Reference links have been added directly to the sources of the images/figures, which are listed below each image.

Based on your requests, the following sentence has been removed : " As all the sources the authors worked with within this paper are publicly available, the methods have been clearly described, so other researchers can easily verify and build on our work and replicate it. For example, in the areas of ethical, legal and social aspects."

Within the Conclusion part, the manuscript has been extensively edited and expanded to highlight the novelty of the research and the contribution to practice.

An initial flow chart explaining how we proceeded with this research, including a detailed description of each step, has been added within the second part "2. Materials and Methods".

Thank you for sending us new references that would be useful to draw on for our manuscript. We have read all of these studies and implemented them in the relevant sections of the article in order to add new insights to this article and also to expand the bibliographic references.

Figure 1 (or Table 1) has been made in accordance with the requirements and now is mentioned in the text (Line 348), and we have also created a new table to which new rows/columns can be added, and at the same time we have added a new row in this table to which we have added sources.

We re-read the text and wherever abbreviations were listed without describing what they meant, we changed them to extended form.

The name Smart City was capitalized by mistake (it is not a reference to a particular project), we did not notice this error while writing this manuscript so we have edited this name so that it is lower case everywhere.

Thank you very much for all the comments

Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors responded to the observations made.

Thus, they have:

- improved the content of the article;

- presented the applied methods;

- the conclusions were detailed.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for the positive evaluation of our scientific work.

Sincerely, Authors

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has some grammatical errors and typos 

The novelty of the research is not yet fully understood, so it is recommended that this be better emphasised

It is recommended that Table 1 be revised and that more comments be added to accompany it 

Table templates do not comply with the journal 

More comments are needed to accompany figures 1 and 2 

Captions in some cases are deficient and not in accordance with the journal template

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Yesterday, April 15, 2024, at 9:49 a.m. CEST, I uploaded a really extensively edited version of our manuscript to SuSy based on the comments of reviewer 1. Together with the co-author, we are of the opinion that the reviewers should be accommodated and we do not discuss the correctness and adequacy of their comments. We accept and work.

We were and still are very surprised when yesterday at 16:50 CEST we received more comments from reviewer 1 with a rating of "Major revision". This manuscript is not our first that we have sent to SuSy. When creating an article, we strictly follow the instructions for authors published on the page of a specific scientific journal or special issue. This is also the case for tables that were already processed according to the MDPI model in the original version. Among other modifications, you requested to modify the table in your review, we modified it according to your instructions, and in yesterday's review you actually requested to modify it to the original version. There are several such instructions that are apparently contradictory. Regarding the quality of the English language, reviewers 2 and 3 had no reservations about the quality of English. Despite this, and based on your reservations, we always had our manuscript checked by a native speaker who also passed the state English exams and works as a professional translator. He didn't even find mistakes in English.

It's not my goal to point out all the contradictions in your reviews, but.....
1. The original manuscript was 24 pages long and individual categories of the manuscript such as references, research design... were rated as "Needs improvement" by the first review.
2. The revised and supplemented manuscript of 33 pages was evaluated in all categories "Can be improved" by the second review
3. The revised and supplemented manuscript in extent 37 was evaluated by a third reviewer in all categories "Must be improved". This means that despite accepting all of reviewer 1's comments, we actually messed up our manuscript and need to edit it again.

I already have some experience as a guest editor of several specialist issues of MDPI publishing house's scientific journals. Sorry, dear reviewer, but I dare say that your third review contradicts the previous ones. Such a procedure is really demotivating for every author. Please re-evaluate our manuscript.

Authors