Urban search and rescue (USAR) simulation system: spatial strategies for agent task allocation under uncertain conditions

Hooshangi, Navid; Alesheikh, Ali Asghar; Panahi, Mahdi; Lee, Saro

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-3449-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-3449-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-3449-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

Research article

|

15 Nov 2021

Research article |

| 15 Nov 2021

Urban search and rescue (USAR) simulation system: spatial strategies for agent task allocation under uncertain conditions

Navid Hooshangi, Ali Asghar Alesheikh, Mahdi Panahi, and Saro Lee

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Nov 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 09 Nov 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Comments to Editor', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Nov 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC1', Lee Saro, 28 Jan 2021
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Dec 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Lee Saro, 28 Jan 2021

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 Feb 2021) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Lee Saro on behalf of the Authors (07 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 Feb 2021) by Paolo Tarolli

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 Mar 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (30 Jun 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Dear Editor, Thank you so much for considering my expertise in reviewing this article titled ‘USAR simulation system: spatial strategies for agent task allocation under uncertain conditions’.
My revision follows two other reviews’ reports provided by the other two experts, and following that the authors revised this manuscript accordingly.
About the article content, first I have to recommend the authors to improve the aim and the provided novelty of the present manuscript. Moreover, a brief synthesis of the expected improvements provided by the proposed research would be welcomed. In this latter case, just one or two sentences could be sufficient.
About the literature review, the authors introduced the role of spatial data and tools in this research topic, too briefly. By the way, geoinformation plays a primary role in earthquake-induced urban rubble as well as well as in earthquake simulation on urban areas. Therefore, a more in-depth analysis should be provided.
About the study area analysis, I ask the authors to pay more attention to the analysed bibliography. For example, to refer to a paper of 2009 about the probability of a new earthquake in the future when an earthquake actually occurred in 2017 is very strange to read. Moreover, I ask the authors to provide a reference for this statement about the North Tehran fault: ‘It has the potential for a 7.2 magnitude earthquake’.
About the material and methods section, the following issues merit attention. First, what does means this statement: ‘We assume the presence of a disaster environment in which events are uncertain’? Moreover, about the simulation model, I would suggest the authors read the following two publications “Earthquake Simulation on Urban Areas: Improving Contingency Plans by Damage Assessment” and “A comprehensive system for semantic spatiotemporal assessment of risk in urban areas” published in the framework of an FP7 European project. i.e., CIPRNet, and that released a complex earthquake simulator (CIPCast-ES).
The authors proposed the use of the VIKOR method. I could concur with the author that this method fits with the research aims. Indeed, in a research article, the choice of a methodology must be justified. Moreover, some description must be provided on this method. It is not sufficient to simply refer as follows “The interval-based VIKOR method has been previously described (Sayadi et al., 2009). Ordering is performed by the central agent.” The authors must provide the required details.
About the results section, the authors have shown the Vulnerability maps for District 1. By the way, in the manuscript, they did not provide detail on how these maps were obtained. To specify the use of ArcGIS is not sufficient. The same thing about the use of JICA. First, the authors must specify this acronym, and then they must provide some detail about it to help the larger readability of this study. Moreover, also about the simulation, the authors specified in the results section that the AnyLogic software ‘… can process geospatial information system data’. Also, in this case, I suggest the authors provide more information about the environmental simulation in the materials and methods section rather than in the results section.
From my side, it is a bit strange to read a scientific article without any discussion section. Indeed, some discussion is provided in the results section, but it is not sufficient and must be improved. In doing that, to refer to other research experiences in comparing this one is expected. In other words, it is not acceptable to have a scientific article without proposer discussions.
In the conclusion section, at least one or two statements on the limits of the proposed methods should be expected.

Technical comments
Captions of figures and tables must be self-explicative. For example, in figure 1, a map of PGA is reported but this acronym and its significance is not explained in the caption.
Case study: population of the study area referred to which year?

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (01 Jul 2021) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Lee Saro on behalf of the Authors (01 Aug 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes

AR by Svenja Lange on behalf of the Authors (03 Aug 2021) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Aug 2021) by Paolo Tarolli

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (10 Sep 2021)

ED: Publish as is (26 Sep 2021) by Paolo Tarolli

Short summary

Task allocation under uncertain conditions is a key problem for agents attempting to achieve harmony in disaster environments. This paper presents an agent-based simulation to investigate task allocation considering appropriate spatial strategies to manage uncertainty in urban search and rescue (USAR) operations.