Evaluation of Earth Observation Solutions for Namibia’s SDG Monitoring System

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I believe that the scientific narrative of this manuscript would be of interest to a wider scientific readership; however, significant effort is still needed to ensure that the manuscript conveys the methodologies and findings in a clear and correct manner. Currently, there are significant omissions which prevent the reader from fully understanding the methods employed, and thus from making their own assessment of the validity of the findings.

The introduction is extremely brief and references are insufficient. Given the broad and diverse readership of Remote Sensing, I strongly believe readers would better understand what is the object of the paper and why the authors chose one methodology instead of other available options if a more extensive literature review could be offered. As a matter of fact the whole paper would benefit from a more complete introduction.

Author Response

The feedback provided is highly appreciated. The answers can be found in the attached word document.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors

Thanks you very much for your comprehensive and well written manuscript.

Please consider and acknowledge my recommendations and remarks given in the PDF version attached in form of text review comments and remarks to particular parts of your manuscript.

with kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The feedback provided is highly appreciated. The answers to the main comments can be found in the attached word document. The smaller comments have been implemented or clarified in the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Minor comments

1)     [lines 123-124]: To validate the information derived from the user scripts, results were compared to the data released on the official GSW platform. Q: Why would there be any difference? How can you ‘validate’ with data from the same source? May use a different word…

2)     [lines 54-57] Why the choice of these four (4) SDG indicators? Are these most relevant to Namibia? Or are they just easier to measure with remote sensing?  A paragraph in the introduction dedicated to their relevance (ecological, environmental, socio-economic) for Namibia and other African countries can help clear this up.

3)     [line 132] There are different kinds of NDWI. Clarify with proper citation.

4) The authors make use of numerous earth observation products and applications (e.g GSW, GFW, trend.earth, etc.) with little background information. Given a targeted non-expert audience, please consider adding a table introduction or supplementary section with more details on these applications.

Author Response

The provided feedback is highly appreciated. The answers are provided in the attached word document.

Due to feedback of reviewer 1 and 2 significant changes have been done in the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, thank you very much for your efforts in improving your manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you very much for the feedback and the additional effort spent on our manuscript. We hope that we could improve the minor changes requested with the current version. We identified some minor spelling issues and improved readability of the figures.

Best Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx