Creating a Roadmap to Forecast Future Directions in Vertical Green Structures as a Climate Change Mitigation Strategy: A Critical Review of Technology-Driven Applications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, I have looked at the manuscript and here are my comments:

Are Highlights required?

Is the Abbrevation list absolutely necessary at the beginning of the manuscript? Is there no place for it elsewhere?

The Abstract is too long - please authors, stick to a maximum of 200 words and condense the chapter a bit.

preferably no bolding in the text. 

References is not formatted correctly - authors should correct this. 

Table 1: formatting is not correct and most of it is unnecessary. Please authors, only relevant and coherent parts should be included. The Appendix is not in the right place. 

Please split the Results and Discussion sections into two separate chapters, as they are not transparent. 

The Conclusion is unnecessarily long. please ask the authors to condense it substantially. 

 

Author Response

Dear author,

please see the attachment where are the responses to Reviewer 1.

Thanks a lot

Best

Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors, This is an excellent topic and paper.  Several recommendations are provided to improve the paper.

1) As the paper may be criticized for not being presented as mixed methods research, the paper needs just a slight reshape so that the work reflects traditional research.  The paper focuses on an inventory of smart technologies, and this information needs to be placed in the context of a research study.

2) Please revise the abstract to include the highlights, no bullets.  Please move the abbreviations to a section in the introduction. 

3) The literature review is "thin" and should be more robust - you present a list of abbreviations so need to explain what the terms mean in relation to the background, not just a definition.  

4) The data - cases studies and associated analyses are excellent.

4) Many papers are criticized because there is a lack of clear statements regarding relationships or themes being examined (qualitative research) or the lack of hypotheses (quantitative research). You provide the explanations, but should start with clear statements and then give the explanations.

5) There are no limitations of the study.

Author Response

Dear author,

please see the attachment where are the responses to Reviewer 2.

Thanks a lot

Best

Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article discussed an exciting topic: the role of vertical green structures and how they affect climate change. The topic is well-written, and the research content is described well. This manuscript highlights the importance of integrating smart technologies and green infrastructure to create more sustainable and livable urban environments. The following comments need further consideration from the authors for a better version of this manuscript.  

1—The abstract is written as a narrative describing the research challenges expediently. I recommend restructuring the abstract by precisely focusing on the research challenges and methods used. The rest of the abstract should show the main findings.    

2—The highlights mentioned after the abstract should be deleted. From reading the journal guidelines, I see that this way of structuring the manuscript by starting with the headlines is not the case in sustainability journals. 

3- The method used PRISMA to conduct a biblomateric innvistegation. Adding a description of PRISMA and how it was utilized in urban studies is essential. Here, I would recommend the following manuscript, which might help: 

• Developing Process for Selecting Research Techniques in Urban Planning and Urban Design with a PRISMA-Compliant Review
• Sustainable Innovation in Organizations: A Look from Processes, Products, and Services

4—The study used PRISM to collect the results. However, in the conclusion, the content analysis is clearly mentioned as a method without being mentioned in the methods section. In the methods section, it is essential to describe this method and how the data were collected after PRISMA utilized them. How the content analysis was linked to the 5W and 1H models were used. 

3– This study should add a few sentences describing future directions based on the research limitations. I believe the current methods using PRISMA might have some limitations that should be mentioned. 

4- The contribution outlines future scenarios for VGS, considering the multidimensional impacts of climate change. These scenarios need to be illustrated more and linked to previous studies that discuss the case of creating vertical green structures in other cities in the Global South alongside cities in the Global North. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor issue needs further chick by native speaker. 

Author Response

Dear author,

please see the attachment where are the responses to Reviewer 3.

Thanks a lot

Best

Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

From the perspective of mitigating climate change, the author has summarized the future development direction of vertical greening structures and evaluated three main technological drivers currently. This study comprehensively introduces the application status of vertical greening structures for the first time, pointing out research deficiencies, which plays an important role in enriching research on green infrastructure. Meanwhile, the future research direction proposed by the author for vertical greening structures provides a new perspective for optimizing urban green infrastructure. However, there are several issues:

 

（1）The author's selection of cases and papers is relatively limited, raising concerns about whether this accurately reflects the current research status of vertical greening structures. This may be due to limitations in the search language, namely, only choosing English as the search criteria, thus neglecting other languages. It is suggested to explain these research deficiencies.

（2）It is recommended to address potential research deficiencies of this study in the discussion section.

（3）In Section 3.4, due to the scarcity of cases, the author focused too much on technical details, lacking in-depth academic evaluation. It is suggested that the author focus more on evaluating technological drivers rather than detailing technical descriptions.

Author Response

Dear author,

please see the attachment where are the responses to Reviewer 4.

Thanks a lot

Best

Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Why are urban issues vertical? Where does the causal relationship between this and the previous text come from? Please provide additional explanation.

2. Line 15 "The urban issues are there for transactional, including environmental, economic, and social aspects", which has no obvious causal relationship with the previous text. It is recommended to make modifications.

3. Is Line 18 Vertical Green Structures (VGS) an attractive solution, or is it more appropriate to use Vertical Green Structures (VGS) as an attractive solution? Please check if the sentence is coherent. Additionally, it is recommended to add more research methods and conclusions in the abstract section.

4. Please complete or use a different expression for the first item in Line31 Highlights, as there is currently an issue of unclear sentence meaning.

5.1. Introduction and 2 Materials and Methods font inconsistency, it is recommended to unify the format.

6. Line 62: "PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews" The abbreviation does not correspond exactly to the first letter of the full name. Please check for any errors and make necessary corrections.

7. Line 71, Line 160, and Line 314 have different capitalization for the same level of titles. Please unify the detailed format and check.

8. Is the original definition of "A Vertical Green Structure (VGS) is a vertical surface covered with vegetation." Please indicate the citation

9. Line 153-159 has a lot of repetitive content with the abstract section. Can it be included in the abstract section instead of being mentioned repeatedly in the Introduction?

10. line143 "1.3." "Aim of the study" is somewhat simplistic and does not show the uniqueness of the research

11. Line 182: Unified single and double quotation marks for keywords; The corresponding left parenthesis cannot be found in the right parenthesis of Line 183. It is recommended to modify it.

12. Line 209: It is recommended to provide a specific explanation for Case Study. The article only lists a few types of Cxx, and it is necessary to provide a list that specifically explains the meanings of all Cxx, otherwise it will affect the subsequent reading.

13. Line 206: "Beside, the order criterion (Technical Readiness Level (TRL), explained in section 2.3)".

The textual description in section 3.1 can serve as a summary of the third chapter and is not suitable as a result chapter. It is recommended to make modifications.

15. Lines 349-353 "Describe the population of plastic based products in the market, recent research has explored the use of more environmentally friendly materials with a lower carbon footprint using different construction technologies. As an example, computer numerical control (CNC) production is used in C17 to build the components, which is one of the innovative examples for" For example, it is recommended to add references or sources.

16. What is the significance and role of Line 436's section "Among all the defined motivations in the Data Management analysis, software is most used tool. It is mainly used to handle real-time data, for filtering raw data, to detect anomalies if any exist." It is recommended to directly explain what tools VGS uses. Add references to this section.

17. Line 547: The descriptions of Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 both end with commas. Please correct. Suggest clarifying the distinction between low GDP and high GDP, as well as the distinction between poor countries and rich countries. Suggest adding the reasons for selecting the three future scenarios in this article, and why economic factors are used to distinguish them when there are many influencing factors.

18. Line 563: It is recommended to provide a brief introduction to the typical characteristics of the three best cases and the reasons for their selection.

19. Line 616: "Most not feasible" Please provide specific explanations and discussions based on examples from low-income countries.

20. Line 680: The conclusion section contains too much content, it is recommended to streamline it.

21. Line 749: It is suggested to change "Scenario 3" to "3rd scenario" and unify the expression with the previous text.

22. Line797: There is a line break in the header of Table 1 in Appendix 1. Please correct it.

23. Please check if the format of the reference list matches the requirements of the journal, such as the 31st reference, which includes two references from 2022. Please review and modify it.

24. Figure 3 Please adjust the numbering of each line. The numbers in the triangle are lower. Please try to align them with the center. Figure 4 is not bolded, and the compass and scale bar are missing in the figure. It is recommended to make modifications. The white legend in Figure 6 has no practical significance. It is recommended to delete it. In addition, the gray color in the figure has not appeared in the legend. Please verify; TRL related information is not directly displayed in Figure 6. It is recommended to supplement the presentation or modify the wording in the main text. In addition, the color indications corresponding to the six types of Implicitations in the legend are unclear, and the short line points to the middle of two colors. In fact, there are only six colors in the image. It is recommended to change the color band to six color blocks. In Figure 9, it is recommended to unify the font size and whether to use italics.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear author,

please see the attachment where are the responses to Reviewer 1.

Thanks a lot

Best

Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

I accept the manuscript.