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Agent-Based Modeling (ABM): Support for Emphasizing the Air Transport Infrastructure Dependence of Space Systems

Sustainability 2019, 11(19), 5331; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195331

by Olga Bucovetchi^1,*

, Alexandru Georgescu², Dorel Badea³ and Radu D. Stanciu¹

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Sustainability 2019, 11(19), 5331; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195331

Submission received: 3 June 2019 / Revised: 17 September 2019 / Accepted: 23 September 2019 / Published: 27 September 2019

(This article belongs to the Collection Risk Assessment and Management)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents an interesting topic, but as it is now it needs major revisions before publication. There are different gaps that need to be addressed, which I would explain below to support the work of the authors.

Point 1) The paper does not adequately refers to the state of art, which is not updated nor adequate. It does not explain why this research relevant, how it fills an existing gap, or how is different for anything done until now. This is a main limitation because this particular field is evolving very fast, and this failure of contextualising the paper in the existing works may limit the audience but also results in an inadequate introduction, discussion, and conclusion.

I would suggestion to reformulate those sections including the following papers.

- On cascading risk and the implications for emergency policy and decision maker:

Pescaroli, G., & Alexander, D. (2016). Critical infrastructure, panarchies and the vulnerability paths of cascading disasters. Natural Hazards, 82(1), 175-192. In particular on the use of common vulnerability scenarios, and the sustainability issues of the system of systems, while it also explains better the role of 'normal accidents' and Perrow's work in cascading crises. Please note the the scenario of Eyjafjallajökull eruption has been mentioned directly in this work.

Pescaroli, G., Wicks, R. T., Giacomello, G., & Alexander, D. E. (2018). Increasing resilience to cascading events: The M. OR. D. OR. scenario. Safety science, 110, 131-140. Which describe exactly the scenario of GNSS failures that could be triggered both by extreme space weather and cyber attack(!!).

Both papers should help to structure better the discussion in particular where mentioning ''category of crisis and emergency management'' (line 141)

-On critical infrastructure interdependencies, the literature evolved a lot since Rinaldi et al. The following papers could be useful in the introduction and discussion

Van Eeten, M., Nieuwenhuijs, A., Luiijf, E., Klaver, M., & Cruz, E. (2011). The state and the threat of cascading failure across critical infrastructures: the implications of empirical evidence from media incident reports. Public Administration, 89(2), 381-400. Useful in particular in the introduction and discussion.

Linkov, I.,Bridges, T., Creutzig, F., Decker, J., Fox-lent, C., et al. (2014) ‘Changing the resilience paradigm’. Nature Climate Change, 4, pp. 407-409. On the challenges of resilience of CI to be integrated both in the introduction and conclusion.

Giannopoulos, G., Filippini, R., and Schimmer, M. (2012). Risk assessment methodologies for critical infrastructure protection. Part I: A state of the art, European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra. A starting point to consolidate the methodology and discussion.

Setola et. al (2016) Managing the complexity of Critical Infrastructure. Springer, open access. As above.

Galbusera, et al. 2016 Inoperability input-output modeling: inventory optimization and resilience estimation during critical events, ASCE-ASME J. Risk Uncertain. Eng. Syst. Part A: Civil. Eng. B4016001.

Moreover, t I would suggest to check what is more suitable for supporting the methodological sections among:

Galbusera, L., & Giannopoulos,G. On input-output economic models in disaster impact assessment. International journal of disaster risk reduction 30 (B), 186-198 (2018).

Zuccaro, G., De Gregorio, D., & Leone,M.Theoretical model for cascading effects analyses. International journal of disaster risk reduction 30(B),199-215 (2018).

Clark-Ginsberg, A., Abolhassani, L., & Rahmati, E. Comparing networked and linear risk assessments: From theory to evidence.International journal of disaster risk reduction 30 (B), 216-224 (2018).

Hempel, L., Kraff,B.D. & Pelzer, R. Dynamic interdependencies: Problematising criticality assessment in the light of cascading effects. International journal of disaster risk reduction 30 (B), 257-268, (2018).

Serre, D., & Heinzlef C. Assessing and mapping urban resilience to floods with respect to cascading effects through critical infrastructure networks. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 30 (B), 235-243, (2018).

Point 2) The paper in many points is generic and needs to be more substantial and needs to be checked carefully.

For example, from in line 45-47 explain shortly a very complex picture, that is instead referring to a very specific sectoral dependencies...And why Satellites are mentioned there without explain adequately the issue of dependencies and explaining better why this has been chosen and the bases of the building up of the scenario?

This could be easily done for example using the work by Pescaroli et al. 2018 , but also the methodological discussion should integrate reports such as:

Government Office for Science (2018), Satellite-derived Time and Position: A Study of Critical Dependencies. This may provide also a better picture than the one used that is very complicated and hard to grasp without a proper explanation.

Point 3) The whole session of Materials and Methods is not supported by any reference and it's not clear how the study would be replicable. Please consider the existing state of art and the reference above. How the scenario were chosen? The work of Pescaroli and Alexander 2016, and Pescaroli et al. 2018 mentioned some of what have been proposed, was this used ? Otherwise, the criteria for the selection were e.g. the presence in some a National Risk Register, strategic documents etc.? Please be consistent and replicable.

All the best,

Author Response

We highly appreciate the valuable advices from the reviewers for improving the overall quality of this manuscript. Based on their comments and suggestions, we have modified the original manuscript carefully and highlighted all the revisions.

The point-by-point responses are provided as attachment:

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting the paper titled “A model for air transport infrastructure dependence on space systems”. The paper presents a modeling exercise that illustrates the dependencies between space systems and air transport infrastructure. In particular, the paper shows how each of six adverse situations that occur in the space system affect the air transportation, including the number of airplanes in the air, number of detoured planes, and percentage of dysfunctionality, among others. Even though the topic is of interest, I believe that the paper needs to address some concerns before being considered for publication. These concerns, which are detailed below, are mostly associated with the proposed contribution, the assumptions made, and the proposed analysis.

I believe the paper would benefit from a more detailed discussion on what the main contribution is, to differentiate it with respect to others in the literature. I believe the model is of value to study how the space and the air transportation systems are connected to each other, but it is not clear how this model stands out from other works in this and other related fields. Thus, it is imperative to indicate which are the critical differences and contributions offered by this model (and the provided analysis), considering their limitations and opportunities for future work.

Even though the proposed model addresses a relevant subject, I believe additional efforts are needed to explain its assumptions, limitations, and general scope. In page 4, lines 104 to 115, the authors mention some of these assumptions, but it is not clear how these may affect the quality of the results, or if the model can be considered realistic enough. For example, what would be the impact of having a different topology in the air transportation network? The topology used in the model does not seem to approximate the ones observed in real systems (which tend to be much less symmetric, with very diverse node degrees, flow capacities, and geographical layout), so an extended discussion on these aspects would be of great value.

Regarding the analysis, I believe it is important to include a more detailed discussion on how the values of each parameter were chosen, and how sensitive the results are with respect to changes or perturbations in such parameters. A sensitivity analysis would be critical in order to provide valuable insights on how robust the results are to changes in certain critical parameters, which may facilitate the generalization of some critical findings for other contexts or scenarios. In general, how is the uncertainty in the systems and their critical parameters addressed in the proposed models?

As in previous comments, I believe the paper should indicate how and why the "six tests” used were chosen. Why are those considered to be representative, not only regarding the type of event but also their magnitude?

The paper, in general, is written in a clear and concise fashion, but it would benefit from an additional revision for grammatical, editorial, and typographical errors.

Author Response

The point-by-point responses are provided as attachment:

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Major issues

The paper is on a very worthy topic. However, I felt I needed more background on the method (backed up by literature) to make this more convincing. I’m also concerned about generalising this work, as I didn’t see much focus on validation, suggesting this is really a toy model. I think the paper can make a good contribution to the literature, but it will need some work to get it up to standard.

Please can you spend more time working on the results. A graphical format would be much easier to understand and read quickly. The current table is not good enough.

Minor issues

The abstract reads well but there are a few language issues in the main text. For example, in the first line of the introduction, I’m not sure if ‘Societal development and functioning’ is grammatically correct. Additionally, in the same paragraph, ‘as the more advanced a country is, the more infrastructure it is built’ is not correct. Please proof the manuscript for grammar and consider giving it to a professional proof reader to get it up to standard.

Uploading your code to an online repository would be welcomed for reproducibility. This benefits you as people are more likely to cite your paper.

You should discuss limitations. This is essentially an un-validated toy model, which is fine, it’s still an important contribution, but recognise this in the discussion.

Does capacity represent the capability to get space to land on the runway, or to get a gate to unload passengers? Technically different airports have different capacity limits. Heathrow is runway capacity limited I believe – others might be different. Even if you don’t model this, you may need a general statement defining capacity. In general the paper did not define many of the terms used.

Does the journal style guide require a comma or a decimal point when representing decimals? Please double check this.

The scenarios are very interesting, and I like them. However, more background literature to support their choice would have been appreciated.

I would expect Beijing to have capacity which far outstrips the other major cities, especially given their new airport in the south opening recently.

The authors mention the ‘regenerative, absorptive and restorative properties of a resilient system’ but these properties are not defined anywhere in the manuscript…

Author Response

The point-by-point responses are provided as attachment:

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Despite some improvements in the description and some good effort in trying to improve the state of art, the authors just partially answered to my feedback, that was very clear. They added some part of the text that look random and persist in writing without referencing the sources, that at this level is unacceptable for peer reviewed (see for example line 49-73). Despite my clear advice, they persist in not supporting the choice of satellites and GNSS failures with the literature that has been suggested and is referencing directly to the topic, while using as only source self-referencing (I believe from line 49 to 87 at this point) . In conclusion, I am sorry but they just marginally answer all my comments and I still think this work needs major revisions (without even entering in the merit of the validity of this ABM).

Point 1) The authors try to integrate some of the state of art but answer just marginally to may comment, and they are missing the rationale I suggested.

Point 2) The paper in many points is generic and needs to be more substantial referencing. . The authors explain now the figure, and the issue of satellite system i better mentioned but lacks of literature support that is not self referencing, lacking also answering why this has been chosen and the bases of the building up of the scenario? I retiterate:

This could be easily done for example using the work by Pescaroli et al. 2018 , but also the methodological discussion should integrate reports such as:

Please note that this comment is not for having these two papers cited, but

a: because I think they could support this section to be more scientific;

b) This is a suggestion, but PLEASE support what is written with the state of art whatever it is (See comment above from line 49 to 89).

Moreover, the authors refers to some of the other literature that i suggested in an indeguate way that makes clear that: a) they did not check any of the works; b) if they checked them they did not understood them.

They added lines from 172 to 175 mentioning papers that were supposed to support the discussion and this has simply not have been done. E.g. The authors are citing a conceptual work of Linkov on Reslience on scenario building together with risk assessment, which were supposed e.g. to help a better discussion where now is citation number 30. They mix together things that can be used to support everything else in two lines, and this is simply not respectful for a review that was made for supporting their work.

Point 3) the authors extend the methodology, but just partially answered to my comments. Lines 140-163 drive considerations that are totally unsupported by the state of art and, again, this not acceptable for this kind of peer reviewed. Moreover, all the work on Risk Assessment that I suggested for supporting this point and the discussion has been put together randomly. Again, the authors ignores from the discussion to the conclusion all the other works on GNSS failure that is not self-referencing in the conclusion.

If they do not like the reports I suggested, please refer to something else but take action.

Sorry, but this is simply unacceptable and my comments were clear. Please take an adeguate action to improve the paper as my early suggestions otherwise for me this work is a full rejection.

Author Response

After a discussion with the editor, we changed the title of the article in order to reflect more the original idea of our research. The new title is Agent-based modeling (ABM)—support for emphasizing the air transport infrastructure dependence on space systems Through our research, we do not want to provide a model – a step by step architecture to follow when modeling the air transport infrastructure dependence on space systems. We used a ABM tool, namely NetLogo in order to obtain the proof of concept – a systemic image of the cascade failure in 6 different situations (involving extreme space weather or cyber-attacks) related to air transport infrastructure (divided into 4 entities: the simulated agent, which is the airplane, the airports, the holding centers and the control centers) We rewrote the Introduction chapter in order to reflect more the state of art We added the limitations of ABM and provided the input data for the first scenario for readers that are interested in reproducing the test simulation in NetLogo. If you consider necessary, we could add the input data for the other 5 tests. As far as our literature survey was concerned, we did not find other similar researches. However we improved the state of art with numerous references that emphasized the same interest in highlighting the air transport infrastructure dependence on space systems The article was English edited by MDPI

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank for your revisions. The updated paper shows multiple upgrades compared to the previous iteration, particularly regarding some explanations associated with the scenarios and the limitations of the model, among others, as well as an extended literature review.

However, I consider that there are still some critical aspects that were not fully addressed from previous comments, which need to be addressed before considering the article for publication.

The authors mention that the proposed model “is realistic, yet doesn’t reflect the reality.” If this is the case, the authors should add emphasis on how to perform adequate verification and validation of the proposed model. This is a critical aspect of the discussion and the analysis, since without these, the results may not be considered robust and the offered insights may greatly differ from the true behavior of the system under study. The authors have clearly stated what their proposed work is, and presents some references to motivate the importance of such a problem. However, I still don’t think that the authors have clearly stated in the paper what the actual academic contributions are compared to other works in the field. In order to do this, it is critical to discuss the state of the art models that address the studied problem, describing some of the limitations of these models, and detailing how the proposed model addresses those limitations. Despite adding more details to the description of the model and other sections, the description remains too generic. A more detailed description of the model is required, particularly emphasizing its differences to others in the field, which enable it to address the limitations of the current state of the art models. I recommend performing another full grammatical, editorial, and typographical revision of the document.

Author Response

Reviewer 3 Report

Changes have been made to the manuscript which have improved the paper since the first submission.

Certain things still need improved however.

1) Certain major SoS authors have been left out of the literature review including both Haimes and Hall, I suggest you include the following:

The new book by Yacov Haimes on 'Modeling and Managing Interconnected Complex Systems of Systems' (2018, Wiley) (https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Modeling+and+Managing+Interdependent+Complex+Systems+of+Systems-p-9781119173670)

The book by Jim Hall on 'The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach' (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/future-of-national-infrastructure/7D4DF0295A9D8A7304E6C87204BAA0EA)

Complexity paper on 'Infrastructure as a Complex Adaptive System' by Oughton/Hall et al. focusing on applying system-of-systems methods to infrastructure (https://www.hindawi.com/journals/complexity/2018/3427826/)

2) Currently the scenarios have been stated in the first part of the results, but these are clearly part of the method. Please edit the manuscript accordingly.

3) I am not yet happy with the level of focus on validation, and also the discussion on the limitations of the method. For ABM, some would argue the models cannot be effectively validated. Hence, I would expect this discussion to be picked up as a limitation.

4) There are still English language errors. I suggest you consider paying for a professional proof reader.

Author Response

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I am happy with the efforts made by the authors that increased significantly the consistency of the text, the contextualization of their study in the current scholarly debate, and reformulated title and content in order to highlight limitations, target and potentials of their study. I cannot enter in the validity of the model, but on what is my expertise the paper now is significantly improved from the first and second version.

I would suggest to undertake just some minor editing to facilitate the fluency of the English in some parts of the text, and slightly reinforce the connection between the conclusions and the add value for the state of art. All the best.

Author Response

We would like to thank reviewers and editors for taking the time and effort necessary to review the manuscript.

We divided chapters 1, 2 and 4 into several subsections We changed the orders of some paragraphs for a better flow of ideas and overall clarity of the paper. We added paragraphs to link the state-of-art to present research and to emphasize the added value of the demarche

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for re-submitting your article, now titled “Agent-based modeling (ABM) – support for emphasizing the air transport infrastructure dependence on space systems”. In this new version, the authors have addressed most of my previous comments, particularly regarding the readability of the document and the clarity of the proposed work and its limitations.

In particular, the introduction and some key sections have been edited and updated in response to the comments and suggestions made.

Specifically, I would recommend adding some lines clearly stating, concisely, how this paper contributes to the field. The novelty of the proposed work is discussed throughout the document, but perhaps it would be better to have a sentence or two summarizing this in the introduction, as there may still be some ambiguity. For example, in line 98, the authors describe what is presented in the paper, but this may not be exactly what the novelty and the contributions of the paper are. Thus, a clear statement indicating what constitutes the novelty of this paper and the proposed models would be a great help to the reader.

Also, I recommend dividing the introduction into subsections, since right now it has 5 pages of text without any clear structure. This idea could be applied to the rest of the sections as well.

Author Response

We would like to thank reviewers and editors for taking the time and effort necessary to review the manuscript.

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