Use and Management in the Heritage Conservation of the Historic Water Supply of Canal de Isabel II, Madrid

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Very interesting approach concerning use and management of the heritage conservation of the historic water supply, the case of the Canal de Isabel II. The approach included several different fragments such as: locality, cultural value of the structure, including also historic, technological, landscape, as well as symbolic features. This is considered to be essential and necessary as the Canal is in use, as a part of the water supply.  I would like to emphasize the originality of the approach since it is not well addressed in the Introduction. The purpose of the paper was to analyse the development of the water supply projects in Madrid. The analysis covers the current state of the Canal de Isabel II and its historic background and historic value. The paper also included the water management policies associated with the construction of the water supply public network which had the Canal de Isabel II as the integral part.

The abstract should contain the main finding of the paper, in order to introduce the readers.

The authors should more clearly state the identified gaps and need of such analysis. The motivation is quite weak and there is lack of the scientific background. I would like that the authors should also include more scientific data and findings in order to emphasize the novelty of the presented approach.

There are no conclusions. It should be of the great importance to review the presented findings and to note the future research of the authors. There are no strengths and weakness of the proposed approach. It should be also included in the conclusions.

A literature review should include more scientific data and papers from recent years in order to have fully cover of all the necessary parts and finding in similar fields or localities. Having that in mind it would be clearer and more concise.

The Discussion section is well structured, concise, but should also include the conclusions that are stated during the research. It is necessary to highlight the novelty of such analysis. I would like that Authors use their results to point out the scientific contribution of their research.

It would be very beneficial that authors provide a comparison discussing the results of other similar analysis. It is only recommendation.

I have enjoyed reading your article.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

General Comments

This paper addresses an actual and important topic from an interesting perspective. This work was applied to Canal de Isabel II  case study . This Canal is a  historic infrastructure, built in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. This historic Canal, built in order to carry water supply to the city of Madrid, is comprising of a several public structures (canals, dams, tanks, aqueducts…). Some of these structures are still in use as part of the water supply, and other were converted to other use. In this work the Canal was studied as a whole.

Abstract

Clarify what is the main propose of this work

Introduction

Line 68- The purpose of the paper is to analyse how these water supply projects, which maintain their original purpose, have also taken on new uses through the conversion of some of its parts and add new values to the existing ones …

Clarification: Please explain better what are “water supply projects”

Line 418 Conclusions

The conclusions section do not answer the aim of the work

The contribution presented in this work seems enough to justify its publication after minor changes.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors describe an interesting study about the Use and management in the historic conservation of the historic water supply of Canal de Isabel II, Madrid. The authors can improve the paper with a correlation with the industrial archeology concept.

The paper is easy to read, but little observation can be found below:

-          Please insert the page number inside the “[]”, after the number of the bibliographic reference. For example [10, p.113]

-          Page 9, line 23 “an administrative reorganization” instead of “a administrative reorganization”

-          Page 10, lines 28-29 – please add “etc.” instead of “…” when you do enumeration, allover the text

-          Page 13, Lines 30-31: sentence not clear, please reformulate. Please add also the full name of the abbreviation

-          Figure 10. When you reproduce already published photo, please be sure that they do not have copyright

-          Page 16, reference 16. Please uniformize for name and surname

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The Authors have corrected according to the given comments and provided the additional explanation. The scientific soundness is now on the higher level and the scientific contribution is now well presented and more clear.