Service reliability evaluation of highway tunnel based on digital image processing

Chunquan Dai; Zhaochen Zhou; Huidi Zhang; Kun Jiang; Haisheng Li; Haiyang Yu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288633

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 28, 2022
27 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Jianguo Wang, Editor PONE-D-22-32743Service Reliability Evaluation of Highway Tunnel Based on Digital Image ProcessingPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chunquan, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Please insert comments here and delete this placeholder text when finished. Be sure to: I just received comments from one reviewer. Please carefully revise your manuscript by addressing these comments. Clearly highlight the novelty of your study. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 11 2023 11:59PM. 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[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: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: Dear editor, 3 features of cracks are extracted, EM clustering is conducted to obtain the safety grades, and the silhouette coefficient is used for evaluating the clustering effect. Partial least square method has been applied for estimating the Euclidean distance. The proposed method is compare with other method, and it shows the advantages of high rationality of the method. The work is fair and the contribution is satisfactory in Section 1-3. But Section 4 make me confused. Below, I proposed some enhancements necessary for this paper. 1. There are two same grades in 5 grades of tunnels’ safety grades in abstract. 2. 1.3 section has appeared for twice in your article, please check. 3. Parameters in 1.3 should be defined, such as . 4. In Section III, level 3 is same as level 4. 5. Before conducting the EM clustering, you had better to check your features’ range. Especially the distance-based algorithms, the feather with high range may have bigger influence on your results. Considering to standardize or normalize each features in Section III. 6. The disease description in your table 3, normal level should be in normal service instead of not in normal service. 7. It makes me confused that you conduct the PLSR to evaluate the tunnels’ safety after using EM clustering to obtain appropriate the levels of disease and using Euclidean distance range to explain it. Is It simpler to use your evaluation method than the computation of Euclidean distance? In your section 3, you can obtain the actual safety level of the tunnel by calculating the Euclidean distance of your variances. The Section 4 seems like no contribution to the others. Why is your Section 4 necessary for this article? 8. Your variances are the fracture length, maximum width and fractal dimension respectively before the Section 4, and variances become to cumulative value in Section 4. Please be consistent if you make mistakes of expression. 9. HSR is proposed as , so the HSR may be . Substituting the sample number 1’s features ( ) into HSR, I get whereas the HSR calculated result is 375.47 in table 4. It also makes me confused. Please explain it to me. The same questions also appear in table 8. ****** 6. 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 ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288633.r001
Revision 1
27 Apr 2023 Author Response Firstly, we would like to thank you for your kind letter and for reviewers’ constructive comments concerning our article (Manuscript No.:PONE-D-22-32743).These comments are all valuable and helpful for improving our article. All the authors have seriously discussed about all these comments. According to the reviewers’ comments, we have tried best to modify our manuscript to meet with the requirements of your journal. In this revised version, changes to our manuscript within the document were all highlighted by using red colored text. Point-by-point responses to the reviewers are listed below this letter. 1. There are two same grades in 5 grades of tunnels’ safety grades in abstract. In view of this problem, the safety grades mentioned in the whole paper are revised and uniformly defined as normal, degraded, inferior, deteriorated and hazardous. 2. 1.3 section has appeared for twice in your article, please check. In response to this issue, the section numbering in the article has been revised. 3. Parameters in 1.3 should be defined, such as . The parameters x_i、y_i, which were not mentioned in section 1.3, have been defined. (x_i,y_i) is the intersection point between the crack and the left line of the fine block, (x_(i+1),y_(i+1)) is the intersection point between the crack and the right line of block. 4. In Section III, level 3 is same as level 4. In view of this problem, the safety grades mentioned in the whole paper are revised and uniformly defined as normal, degraded, inferior, deteriorated and hazardous. 5. Before conducting the EM clustering, you had better to check your features’ range. Especially the distance-based algorithms, the feather with high range may have bigger influence on your results. Considering to standardize or normalize each features in Section III. This problem has not been modified because the disease data of tunnel samples is real data with a large variation between samples. If standardized or normalized processing is performed, the safety classification will be inaccurate due to the reduced variation between samples. 6. The disease description in your table 3, normal level should be in normal service instead of not in normal service. There is a writing error here. The correct sentence should be "The number of cracks is relatively small, indicating normal service." 7. It makes me confused that you conduct the PLSR to evaluate the tunnels’ safety after using EM clustering to obtain appropriate the levels of disease and using Euclidean distance range to explain it. Is It simpler to use your evaluation method than the computation of Euclidean distance? In your section 3, you can obtain the actual safety level of the tunnel by calculating the Euclidean distance of your variances. The Section 4 seems like no contribution to the others. Why is your Section 4 necessary for this article? The third section categorizes the safety level of tunnels using clustering methods, but it does not provide a description of the degree of damage of the samples. Instead, the degree of damage is differentiated by calculating the Euclidean distance between samples. In the fourth section, a reliability evaluation formula is proposed for tunnel linings, based on the determined classification levels and the corresponding degree of damage. The issue has been corrected in the original text, with an additional paragraph added to the fourth section to provide an explanation. 8. Your variances are the fracture length, maximum width and fractal dimension respectively before the Section 4, and variances become to cumulative value in Section 4. Please be consistent if you make mistakes of expression. This article uses cumulative values, and the crack length, maximum width, and fractal dimension in Table 1 are all cumulative values of tunnel defect samples. To avoid any misunderstanding, the original Table 1 has been modified, with the crack length and maximum width changed to "cumulative crack length" and "cumulative crack width," respectively. 9. HSR is proposed as , so the HSR may be . Substituting the sample number 1’s features ( ) into HSR, I get whereas the HSR calculated result is 375.47 in table 4. It also makes me confused. Please explain it to me. The same questions also appear in table 8. The partial least squares regression equation constructed in this article is HSR'=αL+βW+λFW+C. The constant term C has a numerical value of 375.456, which has been rounded to 375.47 in the table to maintain consistency in the format. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288633.r002
2 Jul 2023 Decision Letter - Jianguo Wang, Editor Service Reliability Evaluation of Highway Tunnel Based on Digital Image Processing PONE-D-22-32743R1 Dear Dr. Chunquan, 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, Jianguo Wang, 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 ******** 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 raised by the reviewer. The paper may be accepted for publication. ****** 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.0288633.r003
Formally Accepted
1 Aug 2023 Acceptance Letter - Jianguo Wang, Editor PONE-D-22-32743R1 Service Reliability Evaluation of Highway Tunnel Based on Digital Image Processing Dear Dr. Dai: 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. Jianguo Wang Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288633.r004

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