PONE-D-20-05132

Automated pipeline framework for processing of large-scale building energy time series data

PLOS ONE

Dear Professor French,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript demonstrates a computing method that claims to be faster than others in order to sort and clean building energy data. The manuscript is generally well written and the topic of study is within the scope of the journal. It is suggested accepting this paper after minor revisions concerning the following comments and questions.

1. In the abstract, it is mentioned that this pipeline can analyze the data. In the body of the paper, there is no discussed methodology on how to analyze energy data. For example, HVAC has factors, such as the fan speed, coils, return air temperature, space temperature, discharge air temperature and others that need to be considered and weighted to analyze HVACs. It is suggested to just mention data cleaning and sorting at this stage.

2. In the introduction, last paragraph, “data automatically goes through multiple processing”, how data automatically goes through the process?

3. It is suggested to explain if this pipeline can sort data live-online with connecting to some global controls, or like some other commissioning software, data need to be uploaded. Having high-speed computing capability along with live-online data analyzing tools are considerable value propositions.

4. The author should consider explaining his definition of automated analytics.

5. Most figures have a long description. It is suggested to shorten the titles and add explanations to the text.

Reviewer #2: This paper proposes an automated pipeline building energy analytics -- BEA --a pipeline for virtual energy audit applied to time series. Authors use data sets in a non relational data warehouse in high-performance computing to manage job scheduling for a parallel processing. An interesting contribution is the protocol to assemble datasets and prepare for analysis. It also includes tools for data qualification that enhances data quality, and a machine learning algorithm: hierarchical clustering. The reported scalability is impressive.

Other suggestion:

* line 50: change has lead to has led

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Automated pipeline framework for processing of large-scale building energy time series data

PONE-D-20-05132R1

Dear Dr. French,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Rashid Mehmood, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have addressed reviewer's comments in the revised version. The manuscript can be accepted for publication.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No