PONE-D-23-16713Geometric-Based Approach for Linking Various Building Measurement Data to a 3D City ModelPLOS 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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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: This paper is intended to combine different types of data to develop a 3D city model. In today's cities, the concept of smart cities is clearly in need of multi-layer digital models of urban areas, and contributions like this one are always welcome.

Being aware of the limitations of their work, the authors achieved a high matching rate, which reveals the suitability of their method.

However, there are a few changes to be made to improve the quality of the paper:

- Abstract (and throughout the paper)

Please specify that the Ministry is from Japan.

The source of the point cloud data (aerial surveying or vehicle-mounted LiDAR) should be indicated the first time they are mentioned.

What do the Authors mean by "a private map"? In this field, one expects to see government or institutional maps.

- Introduction

Please expand the research context at the beginning of this section. After that, the PLATEAU project and this paper's focus can be addressed.

Acronyms should be fully written the first time they appear in the paper. E.g., MMS

- Methodology

Given that a web API was developed, it is necessary to show some code, maybe in the form of simplified scripts, of the processes computed.

- Related work

At the end of this section, in view of previous research on the topic, the research gap should be synthesised, and the need of this paper justified.

- Conclusions

This section should not literally replicate the results data but constitute a synthesis of the research outcomes and their implications.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

I have read carefully your manuscript entitled "Geometric-Based Approach for Linking Various Building Measurement Data to a 3D City Model". I consider this paper could be accepted for publication as the results are promising. Nevertheless, before its final acceptance, some issues should be undertaken.

My main concern is on references and their format:

-The citation referring to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is not consistently written in the text (a word is missing twice).

-There are two references written in capital letters.

-Finally, in my view, authors should include some recent references on the projective transformation usage when dealing with point clouds or walls (or façades). Please, consider including https://doi.org/10.3390/s23156924 and https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13020335

Kind regards and congratulations on your research.

Reviewer #3: Summary

The study presents a Web API application for matching 2D polygons representing building footprints from different sources and a 3D point cloud with the 3D building models to create wall textures. The tests are carried out for the open 3D city model known as PLATEAU.

Overall comments

In my opinion, this paper can’t be published due to low presentation and the lack of novelty. I recommend that this paper be rejected. The paper is written like a general description, no scientific detail about the applied methods being presented.

In the abstract the authors mentioned different building measurement data from different sources, but throughout the paper only buildings footprints represented as polygons, 3D point clouds and buildings 3D models are mentioned. By the word “measurement”, the reader may be thinking about building height or other numeric information related to the building obtained by using different measurement instruments. Moreover, by “3D point clouds matching”, the reader can understand that two different point clouds has to be matched, as by “2D footprint matching”, two polygons are matched, but here, a 3D point cloud is matched with a building 3D model.

The method that projects the 3D point clouds on buildings facades to create textured walls, was published before. Please see:

Oniga, E.: A NEW APPROACH FOR THE SEMI-AUTOMATIC TEXTURE GENERATION OF THE BUILDINGS FACADES, FROM TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNER DATA, Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XXXIX-B6, 161–166, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsarchives-XXXIX-B6-161-2012, 2012.

Specific comments

1. “aerial laser point cloud” should be reformulate as “Airborne Laser Scanner (ALS) point cloud”.

2. Figure 1 is of poor quality.

3. Figure 3 (a2), a scale bar should be added as the threshold for the polygons centroids matching is 10 m.

4. “aero images” reformulate to “aerial images”.

5. “aircraft data” reformulate to “airborne data”.

6. “images created from oblique images”? The images are created from images??

7. Explain the meaning of the MMS acronym.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Geometric-Based Approach for Linking Various Building Measurement Data to a 3D City Model

PONE-D-23-16713R1

Dear Dr. Ogawa,

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,

Ayesha Maqbool, 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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Authors addressed all my comments. Just a minor change:

- Authors specified that the source of the point cloud data was MMS, but please, do it in the Introduction instead of in the Abstract.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

Thank you for addressing the comments I suggested to you. In my view, the manuscript is now ready to be accepted.

Kind regards

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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

Reviewer #2: No

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