PONE-D-23-33900Exploring the spatial association between the distribution of temperature and urban morphology with green view indexPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chan,

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Tayyab Ikram Shah, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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: No

Reviewer #2: 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: The article considers an important research subject. However, the data presented is overloaded information, which needs simplification. There are some questions, which needs to be considered for clarification/explanation of the methods. A few examples are below:

Introduction" Lines 59 - 61: What type of discomfort? Need explanation?

Lines 62-65: This is not clear. Needs rephrasing and further clarification. How the two are indicators? What these indicate to. Instead, both are methods and can be applied for deriving indicators or relationships?

Line 65: Spatial or temporal resolution?

Line 65: Shooting angel limitations: Would factors like shadows of tall buildings and planning be limiting factors?

Line 70: What is meant by thermal comfort?

Line 84: replace "studied" with "recognized" or "admitted" or "considered" or "presented"

Line 89: Which environmental factors?

Line 97: Parameters instead of indicators?

Definition and computation of GVI 2.0

Line 120: How is this different than the first generation. The first generation GVI used six pictures with angles 0 to 180? The difference of splitting a picture to two is not what should be a version difference? Using pixels ultimately is spatial coverage or area, so is not different than using area, which was in the first generation or the referenced modified GVI?

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)

Line 157: What is meant by bird's eye satellite images?

Line 162: With the limiting factors described in the introduction section, was this spatial resolution efficient to capture greenishness in an urban environment? How this could be effective, given high rise building covering a street view from the sky at some angle of view?

Land use data

Line 186: The official classification is 9, 48, and 93. How was this classification made to 09 classes and what was the basis for that?

Altitude and the size of the building area

Line 209: How was this integrated with the other spatial resolution datasets, such as the 250 m MODIS or 30m Landsat? Or it was used independent of those? If used independently, then how was this correlated to the GVI calculated from the GSV?

Results:

Line 264: How was this seasonal variation used? It needs to be explained in the methods and that how this impacted the study/methods?

Line 322: Is it graveyards or different?

Line 323: Graveyards are generally kept greener, a traditional or religious norm across the world. A positive relationship with temperature is considerable.

Reviewer #2: The authors mentioned the effect of small plant using google street view; however, this kind of analysis requires very high-resolution data. It should be mentioned how this data was acquired and preprocessed before feeding it to the deep learning models

The monthly temperature data that the authors has used is very coarse resolution. How will this resolution affect the study, since the authors are talking about ambient temperatures?

In line 61 the authors mentioned that Sateliite data such as NDVI. This is not correct. NDVI and EVI are satellite data derived metrics. The whole statement on line 61 needs to be reevaluated and rewritten

On line 65 what does shooting angle limitations means?

I think the introduction section needs to be rewritten with a proper background of the study and identifying how this is a gap and how it can be addressed using the proposed study

The methods section is okay. Some more details on how the data was preprocessed before giving it to the model should be added.

The discussion needs improvements. The authors can put the results in a proper context and show why this is important and how their results added to the current methods that are being uses.

I would suggest the authors to make the changes and also revise the sentence structure and grammatical issues.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-23-33900R1Exploring the spatial association between the distribution of temperature and urban morphology with green view indexPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chan,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Apr 21 2024 11:59PM. 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.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jose Balsa-Barreiro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Following the review process and the successful addressing of the reviewers' concerns, I am pleased to recommend this work for publication. From my perspective, I would like to suggest some references to current works that precisely explore a reciprocal relationship between urban morphology and human behavior. Among them is the work edited by MIT Press on Digital Ethology - (Strüngmann Forum Reports) by Tomas Paus & Hye-Chung Kum, which offers an edited collection that delves deeply into how humans transform their environments and how these environments, in turn, shape humans. Countless permutations of physical, built, and social environments surround us in space and time, influencing the air we breathe, our comfort levels, our daily activity patterns, and our social interactions. Additionally, I recommend the chapter "How cities influence social behavior," which highlights not only urban morphology but also physical aspects such as temperature and green spaces.

Best regards,

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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: No

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

**********

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: Thank you for addressing the comments and making changes to the manuscript accordingly. The manuscript is improved and the reviewer has no further comments.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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

**********

[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.

Exploring the spatial association between the distribution of temperature and urban morphology with green view index

PONE-D-23-33900R2

Dear Dr. Chan,

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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

Jose Balsa-Barreiro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear Authors,

After conducting a thorough review of your manuscript and considering the satisfactory addressing of my concerns, I am pleased to recommend the acceptance of your present manuscript for publication

Sincerely,

The Academic Editor

Reviewers' comments: