Decision Support System Development of Wildland Fire: A Systematic Mapping

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article presents a systematic review of DSS development of wildland fire. First, write a review article is not easy, because it needs a big experience and knowledge in the topic, moreover when the topic selected is complex like the DSS in wildland fires. Here is presented a systematic review.

After reading this article, I have several points to comment on (I'm going to try to be a constructivist, so I ask the authors to take my comments like possible improvement points)

Major comments:

• section 2 (Background) is too long, maybe because the authors try to explain the concept of DSS that is difficult to explain because DSS field is properly complex and tray to abord if completely is not the focus of this article. Maybe this section could be simplified, merged, and focused only on “Decision Support Systems and Wildland Fires” (section 2.2)
• Concerning section 2.2, here, as equal to section 2.1, the authors open several lines that make the reader loses the focus of the article. This happens because of the thematic, but here the effort of the authors must be focused on the topic. For example, is not important to explain here the DSS in forest management, maybe it could be referenced if the reader needs to know more, there are many reviews articles about it.
• Why is only used the sentences: “System”, “Forest fire”, “Wildland Fire”? Maybe there are more sentences that could be integrated (for example “Wildfire”).  And why Google scholar and Scopus only? Here I miss other data sources like Web of Science. Where the search criteria are applied: title, abstract, keywords, complete article, all?
• The criteria used to define which article "is relevant or not" is confused, for example, “Incomplete articles, or that do not resolve a problem”, how is defined if the “problem” is resolved or not? Or how is evaluated if “Papers that are not relevant to the search string”. Those criteria are applied automatically or are evaluated under a human opinion?
• The Data Extraction Method explains the strategy applied, but how this strategy is applied? For example, is a person who read each article and answers the questions proposed, or is an algorithm (there are several methodologies here like sentimental analysis). The critical point is to show how this is applied.

Minor comments:

• The paragraphs of lines from 45 to 56 could be merged.
• Line 66: change “DSS” by “Decision Support System (DSS) “
• Line 86-87: “DSS are the area of the discipline of information systems (IS) that concentrates on supporting and improving managerial decision-making.” Must be supported by the reference. This sentence could be criticized because DSS could be part of information systems, but an information system could be part of a DSS.
• Line 95 – 96: “The Figure shows the evolution of DSS through partially connected subfields.” This sentence could be properly the text description of Figure 1 in line 98 with reference [14].
• Line 116: define “EIS” and “OLAP”
• I like Figure 9, but in this one there are repeated words (for example Matlab, Oracle…)
• Table A1 could be deleted, because the information that shown is minimum (only the cites), and the other information is already in the reference section 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate the time spent in reviewing the submitted article. We attach a file with the responses to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a systematic mapping of studies on DSS for wildland fire management to obtain an overall view of the solutions presented by industry and the scientific community.

The paper’s subject is very useful and interesting in research area of forestry. I have some few comments on the text that must be addressed:

 

Comments:

1)In pages 7-9, there are different subsection titles (as shown below) with the same number 4.1. Please correct them in the text.

“4.1. Research Objectives”

“4.1. Definition of the Research Questions”

“4.1. Search String”

“4.1. Screening of Relevant Papers”

“4.1. Keywording using the Abstract”

“4.1. Study Selection Process”

2)In page 7, line 259: what is “x?”? It seems something is missed in this line.

3)In page 7, line 278 (This SLR addresses nine research questions with their motivations, as shown in Table 3): the authors mentioned that they addressed nine research questions in table 3, but there are six research questions in this table. Which one is correct?

4)How research questions in Table 3 have been created?

5)Is figure 9 necessary to be in the text? It seems it is general plot. If it has been brought from somewhere else, the relevance reference should be mentioned in caption.

6)In page 29 line 601 (Author Contributions: Felipe Vasquez contributed….): Please follow journal template. The author names should be written in an abbreviated style.

7)In page 29 line 605 (Funding: Please add: This research …): The word “please add” must be removed.

8) I recommend the authors to add some more new references in field of wildfire management in the paper. It would be certainly interesting for the readers of the journal. Some suitable references that are highly recommended are listed in the following:

[1] Zaimes G N, Tsioras P A, Kiosses C, et al. Perspectives on protected area and wildfire management in the Black Sea region[J]. Journal of Forestry Research, 2020, 31(1): 257-268.

[2] Schultz, C.A.; Miller, L.F.; Greiner, S.M.; Kooistra, C. A Qualitative Study on the US Forest Service’s Risk Management Assistance Efforts to Improve Wildfire Decision-Making. Forests 2021, 12, 344. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12030344

[3] Francos M, Ubeda X, Pereira P. Long-term forest management after wildfire (Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula)[J]. Journal of Forestry Research, 2020, 31(1): 269-278

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate the time spent in reviewing the submitted article. We attach a file with the responses to your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors answered all the comments done in the first review correctly. I miss that the authors didn't use more keywords in the article searching because the study topic is quite amply.

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's comment, and the concern about the process carried out.

We are aware of the biases of this literature review at each stage of the process, objectives of the review, search process, filtering process, search for concepts in the selected studies, and in the corresponding discussion. So we understand the concern about the selected and tested search string.

To solve this problem, we have expanded the limitations section of the study, adding the following text:

(line 550)

“Finally, the search string used is also an important bias, since there are keywords that have not been considered, in order to obtain the largest possible set of studies. The string "system" AND ("Forest fire" OR "Wildland fire") was the one that yielded the largest number of studies to review. Examples of words not considered are wildfire, fire, "decision support", software, application.”

 

The study limitations section is part of the protocol, and we have tried to add up all the possible biases of the process carried out.

Reviewer 2 Report

Most of the required comments were addressed correctly, except the comment regarding the new relevant references. The authors pointed out the following 3 relevant references in the text pages 4 and 5, but didn’t insert them in the reference list at the end of paper. In fact, the reference list has not been updated and is the same as the first submission manuscript. The author must update the reference list. Otherwise, all the references in the text don’t match with the reference list and all will be wrong. I kindly ask the authors to carefully double check the updated reference list in order to prevent long delay in publication of their paper.

 

In page 4: This reference “Schultz, C.A.; Miller, L.F.; Greiner, S.M.; Kooistra, C. A Qualitative Study on the US Forest Service’s Risk Management Assistance Efforts to Improve Wildfire Decision-Making. Forests 2021” has been described as the reference [28] in the text, but the references was not inserted in reference list at the end of paper.

A recent study on the use of technology tools to improve decision-making in wild fires at the U.S. Forest Service increased the ability of line officers to communicate their decisions more clearly and transparently to their colleagues and partners [28].

 

In page 5: These two references “Zaimes G N, Tsioras P A, Kiosses C, et al. Perspectives on protected area and wildfire management in the Black Sea region[J]. Journal of Forestry Research, 2020” and “Francos M, Ubeda X, Pereira P. Long-term forest management after wildfire (Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula)[J]. Journal of Forestry Research, 2020”, have been described as the references [29] and [30] in the text, but the references was not inserted in reference list at the end of paper.

In Zaimes et al. analyzed the problems faced by 6 Black Sea countries regarding protected areas and wildland fires [29]. ………..

Another challenge to consider is the incorporation of studies of the physicochemical properties of the soil to analyze the effects of forest management after a wildland fire [30].

 

 

Author Response

We appreciate the Reviewer's comment.

We apologize for the inconvenience with referrals. We had not realized it. This happened due to the change of format that the magazine has made, and it did not allow updating the references.

We have fixed the problem, adding the references again.