Development of a Method for Evaluating Social Distancing Situations on Urban Streets during a Pandemic
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This article developed a statistical model to relate the proposed indicator to three other explanatory variables. A topic that is of considerable interests to research community. Here some comments and suggestions:
1. The authors need carefully check the sentence grammar and word typing mistakes, revise the entire manuscript and improve the English presentation.
2. The article should explain whether the pedestrian simulation results is the same as the actual situation.
3. The specific solutions and suggestions should be put forward to make this study meaningful.
Author Response
Thanks to the reviewer for these meaningful comments.
Please check the attached file for the detailed answer to the comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper proposed a social distancing evaluation model to evaluate the level of exposure to viral infection under different pedestrian walking conditions. The topic is interesting, and the article is well-organized, and the writing is fluent. Although the overall quality looks good, this paper needs to elaborate on implementation and demonstration specifications further. My detailed comments are as follows:
1. Authors conducted a set of pedestrian simulations to generate pedestrian flow data. The validity and plausibility of the data should be further explained.
2. In this paper, four variables are selected in the statistical model. The authors are recommend to demonstrate whether these variables are correlated before they developed the model.
3. There is no metrics to evaluate the performance of the model, such as pseudo-R2.
4. There are several typos and grammar errors. Please find a native speaker to proofread it in the revision.
5. The literature review is incomplete. Several seminal and recent studies should be discussed, including but not limited to:
[1] Hassan A M, Megahed N A. COVID-19 and urban spaces: A new integrated CFD approach for public health opportunities[J]. Building and Environment, 2021, 204: 108131.
[2] Yao W, Yu J, Yang Y, et al. Understanding travel behavior adjustment under COVID-19[J]. Communications in Transportation Research, 2022: 100068.
[3] Hong B, Bonczak B, Gupta A, et al. Exposure density and neighborhood disparities in COVID-19 infection risk: Using large-scale geolocation data to understand burdens on vulnerable communities[J]. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.01650, 2020.
Author Response
Thanks to the reviewer for these meaningful comments.
Please check the attached file for the detailed answer to the comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper attempts to develop a method for evaluating social distancing situations on urban streets, namely, the level of exposure to viral infection for pedestrians. The authors present a statistical model to relate the social distancing indicator to three explanatory variables: pedestrian density, clumsiness, and directional heterogeneity.
The goal of the study and the overall efforts are timely and interesting.
The introduction is brief and clear and well supported by relevant references. The importance of social distancing and the state of the art in this field is briefly but clearly explained. The problem is clearly articulated. The methodology and results are clear and well-illustrated.
The weak point of this research I see in the possible error of the simulation of the pedestrian movements. It was interesting to have a discussion about the possible input data for the model, which now is based on the pedestrian movement simulation. Are there any possibilities to collect actual data about the pedestrian movements (using smartphone technologies or image recognition (if there is a camera installed in the area) to verify the current simulations or to make simulations based on that?
Another important aspect of the outdoor movement and the infection risk, not explored here, might be the weather situation.
I have noticed several language and grammar flaws in the text; I would suggest reading it through again or proofreading it.
Author Response
Thanks to the reviewer for these positive comments.
Please check the attached file for the detailed answer to the comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
