Analysis of factors influencing levee safety using the DEMATEL method

Dorota Mirosław-Świątek; Paweł Popielski; Piotr Śliwiński; Tomasz Cwalina; Zdzisław Skutnik

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255755

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 30, 2021
28 May 2021 Decision Letter - Ahmed Mancy Mosa, Editor PONE-D-21-09108 Analysis of factors influencing levee safety using the DEMATEL method PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mirosław-Świątek, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please consider all the comments of all reviewers Please submit your revised manuscript by 7 June 2021. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. 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 Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. 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 Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 article entitled “Analysis of factors influencing levee safety using the DEMATEL method” aims to apply the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method to develop a cause-and-effect model for factors impacting the condition and safety of levees. The paper is well written and properly organized. The English is correct. The authors introduce the paper correctly and explain the study. They use a methodology, which is not novel, and apply it to study the safety level of levees. The safety is assessed by means of experts’ knowledge. Therefore, the authors do not quantify this safety level. This is the main drawback of the paper. In order to prove the results obtained in the study, they should be related to some other studies performed on the assessment of levees conditions. The manuscript could improve its scientific base and novelty by including information regarding other studies but also, by including the results of those studies in the elaboration of matrices, if possible. There is no mention about the piping effect, which is important in the safety assessment of levees. My recommendation is major revision. Reviewer #2: The authors did a good work and covered an interesting area. However, only few remarks can be addressed to improve the quality of the article: Conclusions: Rewrite the conclusions in Points Double check the references and unify the citation style in the list ****** 6. 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Revision 1
14 Jul 2021 Author Response Reviewer 1 We would like to thank the Reviewer for the work done in this revision. We will follow and answer all the proposed questions/issues to correctly improve the manuscript. They use a methodology, which is not novel, and apply it to study the safety level of levees. The safety is assessed by means of experts’ knowledge. Therefore, the authors do not quantify this safety level. This is the main drawback of the paper. In order to prove the results obtained in the study, they should be related to some other studies performed on the assessment of levees conditions. The manuscript could improve its scientific base and novelty by including information regarding other studies but also, by including the results of those studies in the elaboration of matrices, if possible. Response: We would like to note kindly that the aim of our study was to find out the inter-relationships of factors impacting the levee technical condition performed as a cause-and-effect model and not to develop a method for assessing levee safety of levees conditions. The obtained results from our the causal-and-effect model allowing through the application of the DEMATEL method, the identifying cause-and-effect relationships between those factors and classifying them as cause or effect factors. The results of this type of analysis have not been presented in the literature so far. This approach cannot be interpreted as a method for evaluating the performance of levees. Therefore, our results cannot be related to some other studies performed on the assessment of levees conditions. In revised manuscript the Discussion has been rewritten as suggested by the Reviewer. We clarified better the context of our analyses in relation to levee performance evaluation methods (lines 374-424). In the revised manuscript the following articles have been added to the references: 1. Mériaux P, Royet P, Folton C. 2001. Surveillance, entretien et diagnostic des digues de protection contre les inondations [Monitoring, maintenance and diagnosis of dikes: A practical guide for owners and managers]. Paris: Cemagref ed. 2. FloodProbe. 2012. CombiningInformationforUrbanLevee Assessment, ReportNumber:WP03-01-12-24.Availablefrom: http://www.floodprobe.eu 3. Vuillet M, Peyras L, Carvajal C, Serre D, Diab Y. 2013. Levee performance evaluation based on subjective probabilities, European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 17:5, 329-349, DOI: 10.1080/19648189.2013.785723 4. Fauchard C, Mériaux P. 2007. Geophysical and Geotechnical Methods for Diagnosing Flood Protection Dikes, Guide for implementation and interpretation. 5. Tourment R., Beullac B., Sab G A. 2019. Levee safety assessments using an index-based method. XVII ECSMGE-2019, Geotechnical Engineering foundation of the future, Sep 2019, Reykjavik, Iceland. pp.8. 6. Peyras L, Tourment R, Vuillet M, Beullac B, Delaunay C., Bambara G. 2017. Development of an expert-led GIS-based approach for assessing the performance of river levees: the D igsure method and tool. Journal of Flood Risk Management 10:3, pages 393-407. 7. Chen Y, Liu J, Li Y, Sadiq R, Deng Y. 2015.RM-DEMATEL: a new methodology to identify the key factors in P M 2.5, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 6372–6380. There is no mention about the piping effect, which is important in the safety assessment of levees. Response: Hydraulic piping is one of the most most dangerous phenomenon, which leads to a levee failure. It was not included as a factor influencing levee technical condition because its mechanism of occurrence is related to a sequence of events resulting from the condition of factors F7 - condition of levee top and slopes (maintenance work, filtration deformations, settlement) and F8 - hydrological factor, which were included in our analysis. Its mechanism of formation in relation to the F7 and F8 factor is explained in revised manuscript (lines 227-238). Reviewer 2 We would like to thank the Reviewer for the work done in this revision. We will follow and answer all the proposed questions/issues to correctly improve the manuscript. The authors did a good work and covered an interesting area. However, only few remarks can be addressed to improve the quality of the article: Conclusions: Rewrite the conclusions in Points. Double check the references and unify the citation style in the list. Response: As suggested by the Reviewer we have rewritten the Conclusions in points. In the revised manuscript we have corrected the citation style the reference. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response_to_reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255755.r002
23 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Ahmed Mancy Mosa, Editor Analysis of factors influencing levee safety using the DEMATEL method PONE-D-21-09108R1 Dear Dr. Mirosław-Świątek, 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Ahmed Mancy Mosa, Ph.D. 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 ******** 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 all the comments proposed in the revision. There are no further comments. ****** 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 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255755.r003
Formally Accepted
17 Aug 2021 Acceptance Letter - Ahmed Mancy Mosa, Editor PONE-D-21-09108R1 Analysis of factors influencing levee safety using the DEMATEL method Dear Dr. Mirosław-Świątek: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Ahmed Mancy Mosa Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255755.r004

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