From the journal Environmental Science: Atmospheres Peer review history

25-May-2023

Dear Dr Compere:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-08-2022-000106
TITLE: An Open Source Framework for Visualizing Atmospheric Observations Using Multiple Vehicle-Based Sensors

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Reviewer 1

This paper demonstrates methods of atmosphere sampling over different spatial and temporal scales using drones. The topic is interesting, and the results are satisfactory for real applications. I recommend accepting it for publication as it is.

Reviewer 2

Compere et al. described a software framework titled MoVE for collecting atmospheric data using multiple unmanned ariel systems (UAS). In the manuscript, the authors provided some review, MoVE software architecture and a case field campaign using MoVE. The authors also gave a summary and suggestions regarding the application of MoVE. Utilization of UAS or multiple UAS for atmospheric observation has been increased in the recent years. The synchronization of navigation, control, data collection, visualization and others are important for multiple UAS. A software aiming do this work will have great potential for such applications. The manuscript attempts to provide such framework and validate with the application from a case field campaign.

I believe that part of the subject of this manuscript which is using UAS for atmospheric observation is within the scope of this journal. However, a significant part of the manuscript is on the description of MoVE. This part is more suitable for other specialized journal, like IEEE series. The case study with atmospheric measurements is more suitable for this journal. The current manuscript is written more like a report. The contents were not well organized. Please clearly label the sections or subsections. Literature review on atmospheric campaigns and multi-vehicle sensing could be in the Introduction section and shorten. There are 26 Figures and 2 Tables. The number of figures is way too many for a regular size paper. I found that there are figures can be placed in a supplemental file or omitted, for example, Figure 1-2, Figure, 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, just listed a few here. Not sure why these are not labelled in the normal sequence for a journal paper. Based on these considerations, I can’t recommend publication at current form. If revision or resubmission is considered for this journal, I would suggest to focus more on the application part, for example, (1) presenting the atmospheric data that has been illustrated in the Figure 7-1 to 7-9; (2) how this MoVE was successfully used in the field study, what are the advantages or improvements compared with other field campaigns or currently used control software; (3) shorten the Section 2 and 3, at least more part of these two sections to supplemental file.

Reviewer 3

Compere, Adkins, and Krishnan present a new framework to be used as a tool for managing and visualizing observations from multiple vehicles in a field campaign. The proposed software framework (MoVE) attempts to solve the problems that come along with complex, multi-vehicle campaigns, by helping to plan the experiments beforehand, track the vehicles in real-time during the experiment while saving the data to a common table, and visualize the data afterward. As someone who has experience in complex field campaigns, I can see how the MoVE framework could be very helpful in managing these tasks. The authors did a good job in presenting their original framework and it’s strengths, complete with an example field campaign. However, I have concerns as to the applicability of MoVE to other field campaigns, as well as the physically limited range of use, which could greatly limit the scientific significance and impact on the community. Despite these hesitations, I do believe that the method (and the manuscript) has potential to be impactful in the field measurement and instrumentation community of atmospheric science and should therefore be published in Environmental Science: Atmospheres after my comments have been addressed.

A summary of my major comments:
First, there is some problem with how the paper is structured. The focus of the paper is on the MoVE framework, although the abstract, introduction, and literature review sections have a big focus on UAVs even though MoVE is presented as being suitable for any kind of multi-vehicle campaign. Since MoVE seems to be suitable for use with many different types of vehicles, such as pedestrians, cars, and bicycles, and it would be nice to show data from that as well, or at least make a stronger case for how it can be easily applied to other vehicular measurements. This connects well to my second major comment, which is that it is not entirely clear how well MoVE would work for other types of field campaigns. It appears to work well enough for the campaign presented here (with the notable drawback of not being able to include the manned aircraft and weather balloon measurements), but it seems like not a straightforward task to implement it for another campaign. The issue of physical range (a few hundred meters between instruments) is also a concern for atmospheric measurements. The authors could do more to present how MoVE could be applied to other scenarios in order to increase its significance and impact. Finally, many of the figures must be improved for readability. As they stand now, they are too low resolution to be read properly, which really detracts from the understanding. Further details and comments are in the following:

General comments: a) Number the sections. You refer to section numbers but they are not there. I gave them numbers sequentially and use them to refer to when giving comments. b) References to figures are often not correct, please check through them all again just before submitting. c) Add serial commas to improve text readability. d) Be consistent with how your write “N” number of vehicles.
Consider changing the title to: “The Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE): an Open Source Framework for Managing and Visualizing Atmospheric Observations from Multiple Vehicle-Based Sensors”. The change is important because one of the hardware/software framework's main goals is to manage the vehicle and sensor data, rather than to just visualize it. Additionally, adding MoVE to the title is nice to increase the name recognition of your work.
Abstract: I would strongly suggest reframing your abstract so that it is less about UAVs and more about general multi-vehicle campaigns and how MoVE helps those. Instead of starting with 5 sentences about UAVs, you can start with discussing how multi-vehicle campaigns are very important and increasingly being done to get atmospheric observations at good spatial / horizontal scales, although they are difficult to undertake because it’s a logistical nightmare, but MoVE can help.

Introduction (Section 1): Consider combining 1.1. with the general intro. Section 1.1. repeats some of what was already said in the first intro paragraph, i.e. the difficulties of multi-vehicle field campaigns.
1.2 title: add acronym “The Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE)”
1.2 sentence 5: how does the visualization assist with “predicting anomalies” and “separation issues”? What do you mean by those two phrases? Consider adjusting the phrases or adding a sentence to give an example of that.
1.2 sentence 7: what is a “lawn-mower style” flight pattern? This phrase comes up again later in the text, so it would be especially helpful to include here what that means (z-shaped?)
1.3 – Figure 1.1 – the figure is a bit busy, though I like it for giving an example of a multiple-vehicle scenario. Suggestions: a) move the axis reference to just the lower front corner of the figure, so that the x, y, z arrows are all at the front lower corner and small, b) get rid of the word labels in the figure and just put letter references to each vehicle, and then say what each item is in the figure caption, c) do the colors signify something? if they do, then explain the significance in the caption. If there is no meaning to the colors, then unify or get rid of some colors so that it looks more uniform. E.g. the bright green is quite harsh to look at. You could make the three multi-rotor drones the same color, the pedestrians a single color, etc.
1.3 and generally: use of the word “telemetry” – I am not sure this word is being used correctly. Telemetry is a way of transmitting information, not the information itself. “MoVE gathers telemetry from each vehicle” change to “MoVE gathers data from each vehicle using telemetry”. Correct similarly elsewhere.
1.3 paragraph 2, sentence 2: “A live updating data table provides visibility into real sensor data…” change to “A live updating data table shows sensor data in real-time from each vehicle.”
1.3 paragraph 2, sentence 3: remove “data” from end of sentence.
1.3 paragraph 2, sentence 5: change “actionable” to “usable”.
1.4 sentence 2: “…to provide guidance to pilots to move toward 3D volume of greater data collection interest” change to “to provide real-time guidance to pilots fly toward areas of interest”.
1.4 sentence 3: change “interesting” to “important”
1.4 last sentence: “or a whole host of other atmospheric dynamics” change to “or other atmospheric phenomena”.
Figure 1-2: What is this figure illustrating? I don’t see how it’s necessary for conveying the information. It’s a nice idea to highlight the different types of people involved, but there is no new information here, as you already say in the text how pilots, engineers, and scientists work together. (If you keep it, then you should at least change the outline of the “scientists” circle to blue to be consistent).
1.5: sections aren’t labeled in the paper, and if they were numbered as-is according to the titles (as I have done here), then they don’t match what you have written in this paragraph.
1.5 sentence 1: change “exemplars” to “examples”

Sections 2 and 3 general: Combine these two sections into one “Literature Review” section, with subsections for your two categories. I would also suggest integrating or moving the literature review into the introduction section. It could fit well if you move it to just before where you first introduce MoVE (section 1.2), just after you introduce the challenge of outdoor field campaigns.
2 and 3 generally: at least 2 references were cited incorrectly: “Evert et al, 2016” should be “Bruijn et al, 2016” and “Frazier 2017” should be “Frazier et al, 2017”. Please make sure that everything is cited correctly with the name and year (there may be other mistakes that I did not catch).
2, title: rename it to something like “types of vehicles used for atmospheric measurement campaigns” (i.e. removing “literature review” from the title and making it more specific).
2, content, first paragraph: the first paragraph contains a pretty good, broad overview of the different types of vehicles used for atmospheric measurement campaigns. However, you should add mentions and references also for ship-based measurements (e.g. Gülzow et al, Biogeosciences, 2013), manned airplane measurements (e.g. Gallo et al, ACP, 2023), radiosondes or weather balloons (e.g. Zhang et al, JGR Atmospheres, 2022), tethered balloon systems (e.g. Ramelli et al, AMT, 2020), and pedestrian measurements (Kaur et al, Atmospheric Environment, 2005). For most of these categories, there are a huge number of possible publications to reference, I’ve only listed one example for each, so feel free to choose what you feel is most appropriate for your context. Even though you don’t go into detail, it’s important to mention all the different types of measurements, especially those which could be used with MoVE. For vehicle types that don’t work well with MoVE (like perhaps ships), it is also important to mention that when you discuss the limitations of your new framework.
2, content, second paragraph: Here you focus on UAVs, I suppose because your example field campaign is with UAVs. However, I don’t think it’s necessary to have so much discussing the UAV literature, because UAV are actually not the main focus of your paper (MoVE framework is the focus). Therefore, I would suggest shortening this section and integrating it more with the first paragraph.
3, subtitle: rename it to something like “other types of multi-vehicle sensing”
3, content: this section doesn’t feel very cohesive to read, because there are many different types of methods discussed. Try to connect the different topics together more, by adding how the methods are similar or different to each other. Try also to be specific in what you are describing.
3, paragraph 2, sentence 2: say specifically what the challenges were that Frazier et al mentioned, and then say how MoVE addresses those.
3, paragraph 3: the sentences in this paragraph especially do not connect well, and the reader is left confused with what is supposed to be learned from it. E.g. does the second sentence describe the Anandakrishnan paper? And the GlacierHawk UA is mentioned but not described at all. Finally, it is unclear in the last sentence to what it is referring.
3, paragraph 4 and 5: define your acronyms “DOF” and “v2v”.

Section 4, paragraph 2, sentence 3: “steaming” change to “streaming”
4, paragraph 2, sentence 4: this is not the first time you mentioned “csv”. Define it the first time you use it (in section 1.3)
4.1: Rearrange the paragraph for more clarity: Move sentences 5 – 8 up to just after 3, so that you explain the live-GPS-follower module and the simulated mobility model immediately after you introduce them. The three sentences which will then be at the end of the paragraph may need to be adjusted for flow and content (e.g. the last sentence repeats some of what was already written, so that can be removed).
4.2 sentence 1: reference Figure 4-2 here.
4.2 sentence 4: add comma after “with real vehicle experiments”; change “(latitude, longitude)” to “latitude and longitude”
Figure 4-2 (and most other figures): the resolution must be improved in order to read the text in the figure.
4.2 paragraph 2, sentence 1: “Move” should be “MoVE”
4.2 paragraph 4: Here is the first time that it’s mentioned that the actual sensor data may not be logged by MoVE. This is a huge drawback, as the sensor data itself is arguably most important for the science. It’s important that this aspect is addressed carefully and clearly, to say when or when not the sensor data is logged and tracked with MoVE. This comes back to one of the over-arching comments on this paper, which is the question of how applicable this framework is to other field campaigns and vehicles for which it was not specifically designed for. As it may not be appropriate in this section to go into detail, you can refer to the section later when you will discuss it further.
4.3 sentence 6: reword and make gender-neutral: “The fixed-wing subtype uses a small airplane icon on the map, the multirotor uses a multirotor drone icon, and the pedestrian uses an icon of a person.”
4.6 sentence 2: change “but” to “and”
4.6 paragraph 2, sentence 3: change “weights” to “weighs”
4.7 content: It is surprising that you suggest using this 802.11 wifi network even though it only works with less than 100 m range. This seems quite limited for atmospheric measurements. In the last sentence where you discuss how to get greater range, you should add how much more range one could get with these special antennas (200m? 2km?).
Table 4.1: It would be helpful to have more information listed here for each example. You could add the typical range (distance) over which the data transfer can work, the payload that would be required to host the device, the ability to transfer data in flight, etc.
4.8: make a new paragraph starting with the sentence “No matter which telemetry link is used…”, because these last sentences summarizes / synthesizes everything which was brought up in the last sections, and is not directly connected to the regulatory consideration.

Section 5. Change title: “A field campaign using MoVE with multiple instrumented drones”
5. general: Are there no other publications from this field campaign yet that you can reference? Maybe you can add a sentence to say that publications will follow which go more into detail in the scientific results, and that this paper is only to give an example of how the MoVE framework can be used.
Figure 5-1a: There are four multi-copter drones in this figure, but in the text there are only three discussed. What happened to the fourth one? Can you write it somewhere?
Figure 5-3: Similar comment to Fig 1-2. I don’t think this figure is very useful for conveying the information, as the layout and colors do not add anything (do the colors indicate something?). My suggestions would be to remove the figure and to rely on what you wrote in the text for the information.
Table 5-1: This table is a bit hard to read because of the layout (maybe it would already be improved in the editing/formatting stage of publication). It’s hard to see exactly what is used on the multi-rotor UA and what is on the Fixed-Wing. You could remove the two rows which say “multirotor UA” and “fixed-wing UA” and instead make an extra column on the right to say on which aircraft type each sensor was present.
Figure 5-4: as with all the other figures, increase the resolution if possible. Here especially it is nearly impossible to read what is on the screen. Better would be to have a screenshot from the computer, rather than a photo of the computer screen.

Section 6 generally, and Figure 6-2: From what I understand, the interface shows the collected data in table format only. I can imagine that it would be very hard to read and notice changes in the data in real-time, and that a plot showing some of the data would be more helpful. For example, a plot showing the log file size over time, so that at a quick glance you can see that it is increasing or where it may have stopped. Similarly, and most important for real-time scientific feedback, a plot of the sensor data like temperature or humidity over time would be very useful.
Figure 6-3: I also struggle to see the importance of this figure, because I think what is said in the text about these pilot steps is already sufficient.
Figure 6-4: add to the caption that the 3 multi-rotor UAVs are not shown in the image.

Section 7 paragraph 1: it’s disappointing that the manned aircraft and the weather balloons weren’t able to be reliably incorporated into MoVE (again coming back to the applicability to other field campaigns), but it’s good that you plan to improve that in the future. You could add here how much more range you expect to get by using the 900MHz Lora devices (is it realistic to assume that it would be much more reliable?).
7 paragraph 1: It says that the manned aircraft and weather balloon data was able to be incorporated by matching their timestamps to MoVE timestamps. Was that done in the post-processing stage? Why isn’t the data from those vehicles presented here along with the UAV data?
Figures 7-1 and 7-2: make the multi-rotor UA lines thicker so they are easier to see on the figure. Additionally, since you label the UAVs with their names in this figure and later figures, their names should be mentioned in the text somewhere, ideally when you introduce the drones.
7 paragraphs 2-3 and Figures 7-1 and 7-2: It is not immediately clear to the reader how these plots are 3D. You could add an explanation that the interface is 3D because the user can rotate the environment in 3 dimensions, and here you show just two viewing angles, one each in Figure 7-1 and 7-2.
7.1 paragraph 1: make a paragraph break at the sentence “The VTOL fixed-wing UA was launched..:”
7.1 paragraph 1: change “air-boss” to “Air Boss” to be consistent with how you first mentioned it in section 1.
7.1 title: the first three paragraphs are not about post-processing, but rather about describing how the experiment went. I would suggest moving the title down to after the third paragraph, so that the fourth paragraph (starting with “Extracting, or segmenting, data for the fixed-wing UA…”) is the first paragraph under the new heading, because this is where you really start describing the post-processing of the fixed-wing UA.
7.1 content: It is not clear what is part of the MoVE program here. How are these post-processing steps incorporated into the software interface?
Figure 7-3, 7-4, 7-5 and related text: I assume this data is from one specific flight. Write somewhere what day and time this flight occurred.
Figure 7-5: make the colored segments thicker so that the color is easier to see.
7.2 paragraph 1, sentence 2: add reference to Figure 7-6 at the end of the sentence.
Figure 7-6 and related text: Why were the UAVs each stopping in 50 m increments from the launch location, rather than being set to coordinated heights above mean sea level (AMSL)? Was this the result of a scientific reason or a logistical reason? Why did the Spiderman UA not make it to the final altitude? Include these details in the text.
Figure 7-6 and 7-7 and text: For these flights too, say somewhere in the text at what date and time they were taken.
7.2 paragraph 3, sentence 2: Change to “Each colored point represents the average sensed wind speed over the duration of the 60 s data record, at their respective locations.”
7.2 general: why was the ascending data in between the hovering points not used? Discuss in the text what the reason for that is (i.e., why you only use the data of these 60 s hover spots)
Figure 7-7 and 7-8: make the datapoints larger so that the color is easier to see, and add a label to the z-axis.
Figure 7-8 and associated text “The expected trend is apparent where temperatures near the ground surface are higher than air temperatures at higher elevations”: It’s true that this is the general expected trend, but the data is quite surprising because the temperature at the ground is 3 or 4 degrees warmer than the next datapoint only 50 feet (15 meters) higher, whereas the remaining data points at higher heights do not exhibit much of a trend to cooler temperatures. I would rather expect to see a more gradual decrease in temperature from the ground to the top. To me, this indicates some bias or error in the temperature sensors. Going into detail here isn’t necessary, because your paper’s focus is the MoVE framework, but it is still important to mention if there are any issues in the presented data, and to be careful not to oversell the results.
Figure 7-8: The text says that these are averaged air temperature measurements for each hover data record, however, the figure shows multiple data points at each hover height (seen better if zoomed in). If this is averaged data from one flight, then there should be only one data point at each hover height.
Figure 7-9 and text: The caption says that the datasets shown are from two separate days. It’s unclear what this means: which data is from which day? It’s important to say clearly because it impacts the interpretation of the data.

Summary section: 6th bullet point: add “ends” after the first “field campaign”

This text has been copied from the PDF response to reviewers and does not include any figures, images or special characters.

Reviewer #3 and Author’s Comments with Correction Notes

by: Marc Compere
21 Nov 2023

for:
Environmental Science: Atmospheres manuscript (EA-ART-08-2022-000106)


Author response from Reviewer comments to manuscript titled:
An Open Source Framework for Visualizing Atmospheric Observatons Using Multple Vehicle-Based Sensors

Reviewer #1 comments are recommendation for publication with no corrections.
Reviewer #2 comments are confirmed and superseded by Reviewer #3.
Reviewer #3 comments are copy-pasted below and addressed in narrative format and 2 tables.

Reviewer #3 comments:

An Open Source Framework for Visualizing Atmospheric Observations Using Multiple Vehicle
Based Sensors, in: Environmental Science: Atmospheres:
Compere, Adkins, and Krishnan present a new framework to be used as a tool for managing and visualizing observations from multiple vehicles in a field campaign. The proposed software framework (MoVE) attempts to solve the problems that come along with complex, multi-vehicle campaigns, by helping to plan the experiments beforehand, track the vehicles in real-time during the experiment while saving the data to a common table, and visualize the data afterward. As someone who has experience in complex field campaigns, I can see how the MoVE framework could be very helpful in managing these tasks. The authors did a good job in presenting their original framework and it’s strengths, complete with an example field campaign. However, I have concerns as to the applicability of MoVE to other field campaigns, as well as the physically limited range of use, which could greatly limit the scientific significance and impact on the community. Despite these hesitations, I do believe that the method (and the manuscript) has potential to be impactful in the field measurement and instrumentation community of atmospheric science and should therefore be published in Environmental Science: Atmospheres after my comments have been addressed.

A summary of my major comments:
First, there is some problem with how the paper is structured. [Issue A: addressed? Y ] The focus of the paper is on the MoVE framework, although the abstract, introduction, and literature review sections have a big focus on UAVs even though MoVE is presented as being suitable for any kind of multi-vehicle campaign. Since MoVE seems to be suitable for use with many different types of vehicles, such as pedestrians, cars, and bicycles, and it would be nice to show data from that as well, or at least make a stronger case for how it can be easily applied to other vehicular measurements. [Issue B: addressed? Y ] This connects well to my second major comment, which is that it is not entirely clear how well MoVE would work for other types of field campaigns. It appears to work well enough for the campaign presented here (with the notable drawback of not being able to include the manned aircraft and weather balloon measurements), but it seems like not a straightforward task to implement it for another campaign. The issue of physical range (a few hundred meters between instruments) is also a concern for atmospheric measurements. The authors could do more to present how MoVE could be applied to other scenarios in order to increase its significance and impact. [Issue C: addressed? Y ] Finally, many of the figures must be improved for readability. As they stand now, they are too low resolution to be read properly, which really detracts from the understanding. [Issue D: addressed? Y ]

Issues table 1:
Issue A: Sections were restructured according to more complete details in the large table farther below.
Issue B: Three references were added (Adkins 2023; Compere GVSETS; Compere, IMECE) to provide context on using MoVE in simulation and for ground and air vehicles. This paper focuses on atmospheric science data collection.
Issue C: This issue is similar to Issue B above, which was addressed.
Issue D: Figure sizes and associated text will be addressed in collaboration with the journal’s editor and layout staff. 9-point font for the body-text and 7-point font for caption text according to the journal template is already unusually small. So figure text must also be addressed accordingly. One option is to make some high-value figures double-column wide. Another option is to add additional overlays with larger text on some images.


Further details and comments are in the following:

General comments: a) Number the sections. You refer to section numbers but they are not there. I gave them numbers sequentially and use them to refer to when giving comments. [addressed? Y ] b) References to figures are often not correct, please check through them all again just before submitting. [addressed? [Y] ] c) Add serial commas to improve text readability. [addressed? [Y] ] d) Be consistent with how your write “N” number of vehicles. [addressed? [Y] ]

Consider changing the title to: “The Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE): an Open Source Framework for Managing and Visualizing Atmospheric Observations from Multiple Vehicle-Based Sensors”. The change is important because one of the hardware/software framework's main goals is to manage the vehicle and sensor data, rather than to just visualize it. Additionally, adding MoVE to the title is nice to increase the name recognition of your work. [addressed? Y ]

Abstract: I would strongly suggest reframing your abstract so that it is less about UAVs and more about general multi-vehicle campaigns and how MoVE helps those. Instead of starting with 5 sentences about UAVs, you can start with discussing how multi-vehicle campaigns are very important and increasingly being done to get atmospheric observations at good spatial / horizontal scales, although they are difficult to undertake because it’s a logistical nightmare, but MoVE can help. [addressed? Y abstract sentences about drones were moved to the introduction ]


Issues table 2:
# done? who? Comment
1 Y Introduction (Section 1): Consider combining 1.1. with the general intro. Section 1.1. repeats some of what was already said in the first intro paragraph, i.e. the difficulties of multi-vehicle field campaigns.
Adjusted. Sentences were moved from Abstract into Introduction, rearranged into a list of “First, then Second” then sentences removed from Section 1.1 so that section is more unique. Addressed.

2 Y 1.2 title: add acronym “The Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE)”
Added.

3 Y KAA 1.2 sentence 5: how does the visualization assist with “predicting anomalies” and “separation issues”? What do you mean by those two phrases? Consider adjusting the phrases or adding a sentence to give an example of that.
The anomalies in multi-vehicle planning is, specifically, safe vehicle separation. This has been clarified.

4 Y 1.2 sentence 7: what is a “lawn-mower style” flight pattern? This phrase comes up again later in the text, so it would be especially helpful to include here what that means (z-shaped?)

(Weldon, Hupy 2020) citation added to a paper that clearly illustrates a lawnmower style flight plan. The lawnmower description is fairly common in the drone aviation community.

5 Y 1.3 – Figure 1.1 – the figure is a bit busy, though I like it for giving an example of a multiple-vehicle scenario. Suggestions: a) move the axis reference to just the lower front corner of the figure, so that the x, y, z arrows are all at the front lower corner and small, b) get rid of the word labels in the figure and just put letter references to each vehicle, and then say what each item is in the figure caption, c) do the colors signify something? if they do, then explain the significance in the caption. If there is no meaning to the colors, then unify or get rid of some colors so that it looks more uniform. E.g. the bright green is quite harsh to look at. You could make the three multi-rotor drones the same color, the pedestrians a single color, etc.

Implemented. These are all constructive inputs. I reduced detail complexity, made colors uniform and referenced colors in the caption.

6 Y 1.3 and generally: use of the word “telemetry” – I am not sure this word is being used correctly. Telemetry is a way of transmitting information, not the information itself. “MoVE gathers telemetry from each vehicle” change to “MoVE gathers data from each vehicle using telemetry”. Correct similarly elsewhere.

It’s a fair point. Strictly speaking this sentence refers to telemetry data, but telemetry is a broader term that can refer to data, the wireless link, link quality, the sender, or receiver, and anything related to the conveyance of data from the vehicle to another location. This sentence and a few others were addressed, but telemetry is used often and broadly in this paper. Some corrections were implemented, but some occurrences of the word telemetry were just fine. For example, “achieving live streaming telemetry into MoVE” is clear and adequate. This refers to data and the process of sending, receiving, logging, and displaying telemetry data, in real time while the sensor values change so people can view it remotely as it is happening locally on the vehicle. Telemetry encompasses a number of concepts, not just data.

7 Y 1.3 paragraph 2, sentence 2: “A live updating data table provides visibility into real sensor data…” change to “A live updating data table shows sensor data in real-time from each vehicle.”

Implemented.

8 Y 1.3 paragraph 2, sentence 3: remove “data” from end of sentence.

Implemented with improved explanation on the difference between on-board high frequency data log and the telemetry log.

9 Y 1.3 paragraph 2, sentence 5: change “actionable” to “usable”.

Implemented.

10 Y 1.4 sentence 2: “…to provide guidance to pilots to move toward 3D volume of greater data collection interest” change to “to provide real-time guidance to pilots fly toward areas of interest”.

Implemented.

11 Y 1.4 sentence 3: change “interesting” to “important”

Implemented.

12 Y 1.4 last sentence: “or a whole host of other atmospheric dynamics” change to “or other atmospheric phenomena”.

Implemented.

13 Y Figure 1-2: What is this figure illustrating? I don’t see how it’s necessary for conveying the information. It’s a nice idea to highlight the different types of people involved, but there is no new information here, as you already say in the text how pilots, engineers, and scientists work together. (If you keep it, then you should at least change the outline of the “scientists” circle to blue to be consistent).

It’s a fair comment. The figures tell a story. The words do as well but each person digests information differently. When navigating city streets with google maps, some people read the directions and others look at the picture.

Figure 1-2 has been adjusted to correct the circle outline color.

14 Y 1.5: sections aren’t labeled in the paper, and if they were numbered as-is according to the titles (as I have done here), then they don’t match what you have written in this paragraph.

Corrected. This was an important oversight on the author’s part.

Section 1: Introduction
Section 2: Literature Review on Atmospheric Campaigns
Section 3: Literature Review on Multi-Vehicle Sensing
Section 4: MoVE Software Architecture
Section 5: An Ideal Field Campaign with Multiple Instrumented Drones
Section 6: Flight Tests and Experiment Execution
Section 7: Experimental Results
Section 8: Summary and Lessons Learned
Section 9: Conclusions and Future Work

15 Y 1.5 sentence 1: change “exemplars” to “examples”

Implemented.

16a Y Sections 2 and 3 general: Combine these two sections into one “Literature Review” section, with subsections for your two categories.

Implemented.

16b Y I would also suggest integrating or moving the literature review into the introduction section. It could fit well if you move it to just before where you first introduce MoVE (section 1.2), just after you introduce the challenge of outdoor field campaigns.

Moving the Literature review, with two separate sections, into the Introduction seems non-standard. The comment that it may ‘fit’ well within the introduction is acknowledged, but the Literature Review needs it’s own section, with in fact, two sub-sections.

Considered, but not implemented.

16c 2 and 3 generally: at least 2 references were cited incorrectly: “Evert et al, 2016” should be “Bruijn et al, 2016” and “Frazier 2017” should be “Frazier et al, 2017”. Please make sure that everything is cited correctly with the name and year (there may be other mistakes that I did not catch).



17 Y KAA 2, title: rename it to something like “types of vehicles used for atmospheric measurement campaigns” (i.e. removing “literature review” from the title and making it more specific).

Implemented and adjusted the title of Section 2.1.

18 Y 2, content, first paragraph: the first paragraph contains a pretty good, broad overview of the different types of vehicles used for atmospheric measurement campaigns. However, you should add mentions and references also for ship-based measurements (e.g. Gülzow et al, Biogeosciences, 2013), manned airplane measurements (e.g. Gallo et al, ACP, 2023), radiosondes or weather balloons (e.g. Zhang et al, JGR Atmospheres, 2022), tethered balloon systems (e.g. Ramelli et al, AMT, 2020), and pedestrian measurements (Kaur et al, Atmospheric Environment, 2005). For most of these categories, there are a huge number of possible publications to reference, I’ve only listed one example for each, so feel free to choose what you feel is most appropriate for your context. Even though you don’t go into detail, it’s important to mention all the different types of measurements, especially those which could be used with MoVE. For vehicle types that don’t work well with MoVE (like perhaps ships), it is also important to mention that when you discuss the limitations of your new framework.

Implemented in new paragraph at the end of section 2.1.

19 Y 2, content, second paragraph: Here you focus on UAVs, I suppose because your example field campaign is with UAVs. However, I don’t think it’s necessary to have so much discussing the UAV literature, because UAV are actually not the main focus of your paper (MoVE framework is the focus). Therefore, I would suggest shortening this section and integrating it more with the first paragraph.

Acknowledged, and agreed from the perspective of a neutral observer. But we are, indeed, focused on UAV-based data collection and our best examples are UAV-based results. Most people don’t know the pros and cons of multi-rotor and fixed-wing aircraft. This is valuable content for a multi-vehicle paper. Minor changes implemented.

20 Y 3, subtitle: rename it to something like “other types of multi-vehicle sensing”

Good idea. Implemented.

21 Y 3, content: this section doesn’t feel very cohesive to read, because there are many different types of methods discussed. Try to connect the different topics together more, by adding how the methods are similar or different to each other. Try also to be specific in what you are describing.

Agreed, however, each is unique and needs adequate treatment as an entry in the literature review. Minor changes implemented.

22 Y 3, paragraph 2, sentence 2: say specifically what the challenges were that Frazier et al mentioned, and then say how MoVE addresses those.

Addressed. Added.

23 Y 3, paragraph 3: the sentences in this paragraph especially do not connect well, and the reader is left confused with what is supposed to be learned from it. E.g. does the second sentence describe the Anandakrishnan paper? And the GlacierHawk UA is mentioned but not described at all. Finally, it is unclear in the last sentence to what it is referring.

Confirmed. It was a confusing paragraph. Improved.

24 Y 3, paragraph 4 and 5: define your acronyms “DOF” and “v2v”.

Addressed. Acronyms removed and fully written words used.

25 Y Section 4, paragraph 2, sentence 3: “steaming” change to “streaming”

Addressed. Fixed.

26 Y 4, paragraph 2, sentence 4: this is not the first time you mentioned “csv”. Define it the first time you use it (in section 1.3)

Addressed. Done.

27 Y 4.1: Rearrange the paragraph for more clarity: Move sentences 5 – 8 up to just after 3, so that you explain the live-GPS-follower module and the simulated mobility model immediately after you introduce them. The three sentences which will then be at the end of the paragraph may need to be adjusted for flow and content (e.g. the last sentence repeats some of what was already written, so that can be removed).

Addressed. This paragraph needed improvement. This was improved.

28 Y 4.2 sentence 1: reference Figure 4-2 here.

Addressed. Implemented.

29 Y 4.2 sentence 4: add comma after “with real vehicle experiments”; change “(latitude, longitude)” to “latitude and longitude”

Addressed. Implemented.

30 Y with request for image format support Figure 4-2 (and most other figures): the resolution must be improved in order to read the text in the figure.

Confirmed, but specifically only for Figures 3-2 and 3-5. Figure 3-4 was improved in readability and the figure fonts approximately match the size of the caption font size. The author’s reply is that image formatting for text size needs input from the journal layout staff. The MS Word template uses 9-point font in the text body and 7-point font for citations. These are already quite small and further figure edits are (a) certainly possible and (b) needs input from the journal’s layout support staff.

31 Y 4.2 paragraph 2, sentence 1: “Move” should be “MoVE”

Addressed. Implemented.

32 Y 4.2 paragraph 4: Here is the first time that it’s mentioned that the actual sensor data may not be logged by MoVE. This is a huge drawback, as the sensor data itself is arguably most important for the science. It’s important that this aspect is addressed carefully and clearly, to say when or when not the sensor data is logged and tracked with MoVE. This comes back to one of the over-arching comments on this paper, which is the question of how applicable this framework is to other field campaigns and vehicles for which it was not specifically designed for. As it may not be appropriate in this section to go into detail, you can refer to the section later when you will discuss it further.

It's unclear from what location in the paper this comment originates. MoVE Core logs all aggregated telemetry from N vehicles, and each vehicle logs the higher frequency data on-board each platform.

A new section was added that explicitly describes the MoVE sequence of steps to perform an experiment. This is titled 3.3 Executing and Experiment and describes logging telemetry and on-board vehicle data logs.

33 Y 4.3 sentence 6: reword and make gender-neutral: “The fixed-wing subtype uses a small airplane icon on the map, the multirotor uses a multirotor drone icon, and the pedestrian uses an icon of a person.”

Addressed. Implemented.

34 Y 4.6 sentence 2: change “but” to “and”

Addressed. Implemented.

35 Y 4.6 paragraph 2, sentence 3: change “weights” to “weighs”

Addressed. Implemented.

36 Y 4.7 content: It is surprising that you suggest using this 802.11 wifi network even though it only works with less than 100 m range. This seems quite limited for atmospheric measurements. In the last sentence where you discuss how to get greater range, you should add how much more range one could get with these special antennas (200m? 2km?).

Acknowledged. Sentences added for clarification.

Wifi is easy and seems like it could work for multi-km ranges but in practice, it’s pretty disappointing even with long-range antennas. They work for stationary cases but with multirotor or fixed-wing vehicles it takes a rotating base for antenna aiming. Better networks than Wifi are needed, like Xbee and Lora, so we developed them.

37 Y Table 4.1: It would be helpful to have more information listed here for each example. You could add the typical range (distance) over which the data transfer can work, the payload that would be required to host the device, the ability to transfer data in flight, etc.

Acknowledged. Added a Range column. More detail is not easily added.

38 Y 4.8: make a new paragraph starting with the sentence “No matter which telemetry link is used…”, because these last sentences summarizes / synthesizes everything which was brought up in the last sections, and is not directly connected to the regulatory consideration.

Acknowledged. Implemented.

39 Y Section 5. Change title: “A field campaign using MoVE with multiple instrumented drones”

Acknowledged. Implemented.

40 Y 5. general: Are there no other publications from this field campaign yet that you can reference? Maybe you can add a sentence to say that publications will follow which go more into detail in the scientific results, and that this paper is only to give an example of how the MoVE framework can be used.

Acknowledged. 1 reference added. Implemented.

41 Y Figure 5-1a: There are four multi-copter drones in this figure, but in the text there are only three discussed. What happened to the fourth one? Can you write it somewhere?

Acknowledged. A short paragraph was added after this figure (which is now 4-1a). Implemented.

42 Y Figure 5-3: Similar comment to Fig 1-2. I don’t think this figure is very useful for conveying the information, as the layout and colors do not add anything (do the colors indicate something?). My suggestions would be to remove the figure and to rely on what you wrote in the text for the information.

Disagree. The figure provides clarity on all the subsystems and complements the writing. That’s the purpose of figures. Figure stays.

43 Y Table 5-1: This table is a bit hard to read because of the layout (maybe it would already be improved in the editing/formatting stage of publication). It’s hard to see exactly what is used on the multi-rotor UA and what is on the Fixed-Wing. You could remove the two rows which say “multirotor UA” and “fixed-wing UA” and instead make an extra column on the right to say on which aircraft type each sensor was present.

Confirmed. Formatting improved. Implemented.

44 Y Figure 5-4: as with all the other figures, increase the resolution if possible. Here especially it is nearly impossible to read what is on the screen. Better would be to have a screenshot from the computer, rather than a photo of the computer screen.

Acknowledged. This is (a) labeled Figure 4-4 now and (b) the best figure we have of the Xbee network. Screenshots were lost. A text-box was added on the figure and the caption was improved to describe what the image is intended to convey.

45 Y Section 6 generally, and Figure 6-2: From what I understand, the interface shows the collected data in table format only. I can imagine that it would be very hard to read and notice changes in the data in real-time, and that a plot showing some of the data would be more helpful. For example, a plot showing the log file size over time, so that at a quick glance you can see that it is increasing or where it may have stopped. Similarly, and most important for real-time scientific feedback, a plot of the sensor data like temperature or humidity over time would be very useful.

Confirmed. It’s an excellent idea. A paragraph was added here and in the Future work section describing these live plots

46 Y Figure 6-3: I also struggle to see the importance of this figure, because I think what is said in the text about these pilot steps is already sufficient.

This is an illustration of an important change in the pilots checklist. Pilots use checklists and checklists are tabular entries or bulleted lists, not (only) prose narrative. The figure adds value and needs to stay. The figure was made smaller.

47 Y Figure 6-4: add to the caption that the 3 multi-rotor UAVs are not shown in the image.

Confirmed. Implemented.

48 Y Section 7 paragraph 1: it’s disappointing that the manned aircraft and the weather balloons weren’t able to be reliably incorporated into MoVE (again coming back to the applicability to other field campaigns), but it’s good that you plan to improve that in the future. You could add here how much more range you expect to get by using the 900MHz Lora devices (is it realistic to assume that it would be much more reliable?).

Additional sentences added to provide future solution of a long range dedicated point-to-point telemetry link. Also:
(a) Liu 2019 reference added
(b) DragonLink RC telemetry reference added

49 Y 7 paragraph 1: It says that the manned aircraft and weather balloon data was able to be incorporated by matching their timestamps to MoVE timestamps. Was that done in the post-processing stage? Why isn’t the data from those vehicles presented here along with the UAV data? Figures 7-1 and 7-2: make the multi-rotor UA lines thicker so they are easier to see on the figure. Additionally, since you label the UAVs with their names in this figure and later figures, their names should be mentioned in the text somewhere, ideally when you introduce the drones.

Figure 6-1 was added that shows the 2 balloons and the manned aircraft flying rectangular patterns. This figure provides perspective on the manned aircraft and balloon trajectories relative to the UAS trajectories.

No other figure changes were made. If the figures need clarity, then they need to be made double-column wide.

UAV names were introduced in the text near Section 6.0, paragraph 4.

50 Y 7 paragraphs 2-3 and Figures 7-1 and 7-2: It is not immediately clear to the reader how these plots are 3D. You could add an explanation that the interface is 3D because the user can rotate the environment in 3 dimensions, and here you show just two viewing angles, one each in Figure 7-1 and 7-2.

A new paragraph (#2) in section 6.0 was added explaining that Google Earth is used as a 3D viewer and is for post-processing.

51 Y 7.1 paragraph 1: make a paragraph break at the sentence “The VTOL fixed-wing UA was launched..:”

Addressed. This sentence was removed, but the new paragraph was started as intended as paragraph 2 in section 6.1.

52 Y 7.1 paragraph 1: change “air-boss” to “Air Boss” to be consistent with how you first mentioned it in section 1.

Addressed, in 2 places.

53 Y 7.1 title: the first three paragraphs are not about post-processing, but rather about describing how the experiment went. I would suggest moving the title down to after the third paragraph, so that the fourth paragraph (starting with “Extracting, or segmenting, data for the fixed-wing UA…”) is the first paragraph under the new heading, because this is where you really start describing the post-processing of the fixed-wing UA.

Good input. Section 6.1 was renamed to “Fixed-Wing and Multirotor Flight Coordination” and a post-processing paragraph was moved to the new section 6.2 on post-processing.

54 Y 7.1 content: It is not clear what is part of the MoVE program here. How are these post-processing steps incorporated into the software interface?

Clarified at the beginning of Section 6.2.

55 Y Figure 7-3, 7-4, 7-5 and related text: I assume this data is from one specific flight. Write somewhere what day and time this flight occurred.

Confirmed. Experiment date added at the beginning of Section 6.0.

56 Y Figure 7-5: make the colored segments thicker so that the color is easier to see.

Figure has not been changed. If it is too hard to see then it needs to be larger in the final print. Journal formatting staff can confirm and adjust.

57 Y 7.2 paragraph 1, sentence 2: add reference to Figure 7-6 at the end of the sentence.

Addressed. Implemented.

58 Y Figure 7-6 and related text: Why were the UAVs each stopping in 50 m increments from the launch location, rather than being set to coordinated heights above mean sea level (AMSL)? Was this the result of a scientific reason or a logistical reason? Why did the Spiderman UA not make it to the final altitude? Include these details in the text.

Addressed in paragraph 2 of section 6.3.

59 Y Figure 7-6 and 7-7 and text: For these flights too, say somewhere in the text at what date and time they were taken.

Addressed in paragraph 1 of section 6.3.

60 Y 7.2 paragraph 3, sentence 2: Change to “Each colored point represents the average sensed wind speed over the duration of the 60 s data record, at their respective locations.”

Addressed. Implemented in what is now section 6.3 just above Figure 6-8.

61 Y 7.2 general: why was the ascending data in between the hovering points not used? Discuss in the text what the reason for that is (i.e., why you only use the data of these 60 s hover spots). Figure 7-7 and 7-8: make the datapoints larger so that the color is easier to see, and add a label to the z-axis.

Ascending data addressed in the paragraph below Figure 6-7.

Data points made larger in figures 6-8 and 6-9.

62 Y Figure 7-8 and associated text “The expected trend is apparent where temperatures near the ground surface are higher than air temperatures at higher elevations”: It’s true that this is the general expected trend, but the data is quite surprising because the temperature at the ground is 3 or 4 degrees warmer than the next datapoint only 50 feet (15 meters) higher, whereas the remaining data points at higher heights do not exhibit much of a trend to cooler temperatures. I would rather expect to see a more gradual decrease in temperature from the ground to the top. To me, this indicates some bias or error in the temperature sensors. Going into detail here isn’t necessary, because your paper’s focus is the MoVE framework, but it is still important to mention if there are any issues in the presented data, and to be careful not to oversell the results.

Addressed. Added insight into the reason for that type of behavior due to the topography the experiment was performed in.

One of the objectives of the overarching scientific investigation, which these flights were associated with, was to look at the influence of topography on convective initiation. Consequently, the uncrewed aircraft were placed over varying terrain; some aircraft were launched from valleys and some from higher ground. This not only created differences in local elevation above mean sea level but launch and recovery locations with varying vegetation (typically more fertile in the lower lying locations where you would expect higher evapotranspiration), differences in insolation (due to shadows), and differences in diurnal evolution due to previous nighttime cold pooling and such. Finally, and most predominately, the lapse rate would be expected to be very nonlinear near the surface, in fact oftentimes superadiabatic, due to high surface heating and, through conduction, heating of the air immediately above the surface. With air as a good insulator, this heat does not transfer up very far.
63 Y Figure 7-8: The text says that these are averaged air temperature measurements for each hover data record, however, the figure shows multiple data points at each hover height (seen better if zoomed in). If this is averaged data from one flight, then there should be only one data point at each hover height.

That’s right. They are not averages. Multiple points are the full data record. Corrected by deleting the word ‘averaged’ over 60 seconds.

64 Y Figure 7-9 and text: The caption says that the datasets shown are from two separate days. It’s unclear what this means: which data is from which day? It’s important to say clearly because it impacts the interpretation of the data.

This is addressed in paragraph 1 of Section 6.0.

65 Y Summary section: 6th bullet point: add “ends” after the first “field campaign”

Addressed. Implemented.

04-Dec-2023

Dear Dr Compere:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-08-2022-000106.R1
TITLE: The Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE): an Open Source Framework for Gathering and Visualizing Atmospheric Observations Using Multiple Vehicle-Based Sensors

Thank you for your submission to Environmental Science: Atmospheres, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. I sent your manuscript to reviewers and I have now received their reports which are copied below.

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************

Reviewer 3

Dear Authors,
You did a good job addressing and implementing my feedback. I am glad to see the improvements to some of the figures and that you added the new Figure 6-1. The new sentences/paragraphs added where requested were well done and do contribute to greatly improving the manuscript, as do the appropriate structural changes. There are still typos and some grammar problems, and my comment about the incorrect citations/references was not addressed, but I trust that this will be taken care of with the typesetting phase of the publication (as well as the issue with the readability of the figures). Overall, I do recommend this version of the manuscript for acceptance to the journal.

I have one small comment for a non-grammatical thing. A change needs to be made to Figure 1-2: move the orange circle more to the left so that the overlapping area between each of the two circles is the same size.

Prof. Nønne Prisle, Associate Editor, Environmental Sciences: Atmospheres
Royal Society of Chemistry, Thomas Graham House (290),
Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WF
esatmospheres@rsc.org December 19th, 2023


Subject: Author’s second response to reviewer comments on Manuscript ID: EA-ART-08-2022-000106


Dear Editors,

Thank you for conditionally accepting this manuscript pending adjustments from Reviewer #3. We have addressed each comment and made two additional improvements. The first additional improvement was an overlooked comment from the first review wave. This is documented in the revisions record. The additional improvement is clarity of Figures 6-2 and 6-3. The vehicle traces are thicker and scale better to the smaller images in a dual-column format.

Reviewer #3’s inputs were, again, constructive and very helpful for increasing the quality of this manuscript. Please accept this letter and associated document with detailed comments addressing reviewer feedback on the manuscript ID: EA-ART-08-2022-000106.

If there is one figure that would be considered for a full-page-width formatting, it is Figure 6-10. That is the culminating figure of all work in this manuscript.

We are pleased to resubmit the manuscript for your consideration for publication in RSC’s Environmental Science: Atmospheres.

Most Sincerely,

[MARC COMPERE]

Dr. Marc Compere, Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Mobile: 512.587.8970, comperem@erau.edu

EA-ART-08-2022-000106.R1Environmental Science: Atmospheres manuscript (EA-ART-08-2022-000106)

Second author’s response from second round of Reviewer comments to manuscript titled:
An Open Source Framework for Visualizing Atmospheric Observations Using Multiple Vehicle-Based Sensors

Reviewer #3 comments are copy-pasted below from a pdf in email on Mon Dec 4th, 2023 11:25 AM:



************
REVIEWER REPORT(S):
Referee: 3

Comments to the Author
Dear Authors,
You did a good job addressing and implementing my feedback. I am glad to see the improvements to some of the figures and that you added the new Figure 6-1. The new sentences/paragraphs added where requested were well done and do contribute to greatly improving the manuscript, as do the appropriate structural changes. There are still typos and some grammar problems [addressed? [Y] ], and my comment about the incorrect citations/references was not addressed [addressed? [Y] ], but I trust that this will be taken care of with the typesetting phase of the publication (as well as the issue with the readability of the figures[addressed? [Y] ]). Overall, I do recommend this version of the manuscript for acceptance to the journal.

I have one small comment for a non-grammatical thing. A change needs to be made to Figure 1-2: move the orange circle more to the left so that the overlapping area between each of the two circles is the same size. [addressed? [Y] ]
************

One comment from the previous revision is repeated here:
2 and 3 generally: at least 2 references were cited incorrectly: “Evert et al, 2016” should be “Bruijn et al, 2016” and “Frazier 2017” should be “Frazier et al, 2017”. Please make sure that everything is cited correctly with the name and year (there may be other mistakes that I did not catch). [addressed? [Y]



All comments have been addressed.

---
mdc, 19 Dec 2023

20-Dec-2023

Dear Dr Compere:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-08-2022-000106.R2
TITLE: The Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE): an Open Source Framework for Gathering and Visualizing Atmospheric Observations Using Multiple Vehicle-Based Sensors

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to Environmental Science: Atmospheres. I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in its current form. I have copied any final comments from the reviewer(s) below.

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Associate Editor, Environmental Sciences: Atmospheres