PONE-D-22-22011Satellite monitoring of terrestrial plastic wastePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Laurier,

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.

I would ask you make the edits requested by the reviewers, with careful attention given to the formatting notes (both reviewers agreed your non-standard ordering and integration of sections was confusing), an improvement to the discussion (especially with regard to including future directions and limitations), and - equally important - ensuring your github repository is open so we can retrieve the data underlying your findings.  The reviewers and I were unable to access that repository, and I am unable to recommend publication until it is made accessible. In your response, please provide a point-by-point rebuttal to each reviewer, alongside specific edits you made to the piece in response to each comment. Broadly, I enjoyed this piece, and found the application of neural networks to this topic to be quite novel.  I look forward to your resubmission.

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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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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: 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

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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 discusses the uses of neural networks to analyze spectral, spatial, and temporal components of Sentinel-2 satellite data for identifying terrestrial clusters of waste. The topic is very relevant, and I read the paper with great interest as I have been hoping that someone would do such a study sooner than later.

I found the paper to be well written with further scope for improvement. Methodologically the manuscript is novel and one of the few that uses neural networks for identifying aggregated waste. This topic would greatly interest city planners, urban managers, aid agencies, donors, and in-country policymakers. Therefore, I would recommend the paper be published with the suggested changes.

1. Introduction section included methods therefore, it might be useful to present a flowchart showing the steps involved.

2. Line 31, The manuscript includes a comprehensive literature review. I would advise referring to similar work funded by the JMSS featured here: https://www.undp.org/vietnam/blog/remote-sensing-smart-city-solution-municipal-waste-management

3. Line 77: The interchangeable use of plastic and waste seems confusing. How do we know it is only plastics? The landfill sites consist of mixed waste, in most of developing countries, waste segregation is still a challenge. It might be useful to highlight the heterogeneity in the waste composition and discuss the percentage of plastics present across the geographical regions.

4. Line 175: What do you mean by “South Asian biome.” I am not aware of any such biome. South Asia is a geographical construct.

5. Line 453. Google and Mapbox host the base maps. Please provide the data description and resolution.

6. The discussion section is very weak. It should highlight future work and ways the results could be further improved.

7. The paper doesn’t seem to follow the PLOS ONE format. Please refer to the journal outline and organize the sections accordingly. This will help improve the readability of the paperhttps://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines

Reviewer #2: Overall I found this to be a well produced article that combines meaningful work with thoroughly described methods that will assist reproduction and future efforts. Most of my comments are fairly minor.

Abstract - Given the focal area of South East Asia, prominently describing this as working at continental scales seems slightly out of place. Maybe include that this can be expanded to continental scales towards the end of the abstract instead?

Line 3 - While you do go into more detail about the impacts of plastic waste, a good cite early on for “via pathways that are not fully understood” would help build a foundation of where this work fits into both the broader literature and real world applications.

Line 69 - It seems like the paper was misformatted as the Results (and Discussion) sections come before the Methods (and data).

Table 1 - The amount of new detections and related rates are heavily influenced by Java. While this is just a piece of the results, I think it would be good to have some discussion of whether this is driven by island size, sample selection, location of actual waste, etc.

Line 285 - What is the actual size (km) of Sentinel 2 patches around the centroids?

Line 303 - How many iterations of the data engine did this go through? While this is iterative / ongoing for production, I assume there was a “final” number of iterations used for the results in this paper.

Line 378 - A cite for the Bayesian updates would be helpful.

Table 4 - Can you add more details on how you came up with the settings for the sensitivity modes?

The GitHub repository does not seem to be public at the moment. Was this kept private because the paper is under review?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Satellite monitoring of terrestrial plastic waste

PONE-D-22-22011R1

Dear Dr. Laurier,

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,

Bijeesh Kozhikkodan Veettil

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

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 #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 #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 #2: All of my comments/concerns have been thoroughly addressed. I think this paper is in great shape and will be well received by readers.

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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 #2: No

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