eEnergy20 - CityVis Paper #60 Reviews and Comments =========================================================================== Paper #60 The Conception of an Urban Energy Dashboard using 3D City Models Review #60A =========================================================================== Overall merit ------------- 3. Weak accept Reviewer expertise ------------------ 3. Knowledgeable Relevance to Topic: Energy Resilient Cities ------------------------------------------- 3. Relevant Justification of Topic Relevance Score -------------------------------------- The paper deals directly with visualization of energy consumption in three different urban scenarios. Review: Justification of overall merit score -------------------------------------------- Even though the subject matter of the paper is on point, and the authors explain thoroughly how their prototype was built, the discussion around the actual visualization techniques, their design choices, the graphs used, or the actual innovation in the visualization is very weak. Similarly, there could be a more thorough discussion about how their visualization is employed by the different users they mention: city officials, and citizens. Any amendments needed? ---------------------- Some grammar corrections and shorter paragraphs, specially in the introduction. Review #60B =========================================================================== Overall merit ------------- 2. Weak reject Reviewer expertise ------------------ 2. Some familiarity Relevance to Topic: Energy Resilient Cities ------------------------------------------- 4. Highly relevant Justification of Topic Relevance Score -------------------------------------- This submission describes an application (or possibly a set of related applications... the relationship between them is unclear) for visualizing energy data on top of geometric city models. The three use cases each highlight different kinds of energy data and simulations and also emphasize a range of different scales including small municipalities, large urban centers, and regions. Review: Justification of overall merit score -------------------------------------------- The submission fits very much within the topic of this year's CityVis workshop—highlighting a set of tools for visualizing energy data on 3D city models. However, the paper itself is quite challenging to follow and its explanation of these applications and the infrastructure behind them are particularly unclear. The quality of the writing throughout the paper is very sub-standard and difficult to follow, with grammatical errors and confusing ambiguities in *nearly every sentence*. These writing issues make it very challenging to parse the the description of the system. Despite the fact that the paper devotes nearly two full pages to detailing the underlying system and the existing technologies it builds on, I still came away with only a very hazy sense of how the applications were built and what rationales motivated the many technical decisions. For example, the paper repeatedly mentions choosing one underlying technology (CesiumJS, FME, etc.) over others and makes claims about the superiority of those choices without providing any justification or rationale that might benefit readers. The functionality of the final tools (other than the fact that they show energy data on top of urban models) also remains a mystery. Based on the submission, it isn't clear who these applications are intended to support (the submission talks both about "citizens" and "experts" but never clarifies) or what tasks they might enable. Benefits, uses, and users are all mentioned only via sweeping and superficial claims without much justification. (For example — "The dashboard..helps citizens to understand the status quo and makes the urban design process citizen-centric but also aids city administrators in formulating a climate change adaptation and mitigation strategics.") The writeup also doesn't discuss any findings, insights, or observations based on these applications. Ultimately, the main contribution of the submission appears to be the three applications themselves, which provide a basic demonstration of how one might show energy data on a 3D city model. However, because of the low quality of the writing, the ambiguity of the descriptions , and the lack of clear rationales, insights, or findings, I have a hard time recommending the submission for inclusion in the workshop. Review #60C =========================================================================== Overall merit ------------- 3. Weak accept Reviewer expertise ------------------ 3. Knowledgeable Relevance to Topic: Energy Resilient Cities ------------------------------------------- 4. Highly relevant Justification of Topic Relevance Score -------------------------------------- Energy visualisation and different cities. Review: Justification of overall merit score -------------------------------------------- Interesting application with three case studies demonstrating the ability to create 3D city visualisations using open software and solutions. The paper contains an explanation of how this application is created and a brief explanation of each case study. It is not clear how these use cases are related, if they are. It is also not clear the reasons or benefits of the three different choices of design. Further understanding of this would be useful. Also, would be useful to understand more about the users and uses of such dashboard designs. Any amendments needed? ---------------------- A few edits would be useful: - Break up the introduction into paragraphs - Thoroughly check spelling and grammar - Name abbreviations / acronyms the first time mentioned (i.e. HFT is mentioned twice but identified in the conclusion), add footnotes first mention also, i.e. technical terms.