The changes made for this version have greatly improved the quality of the paper. Especially the expansions with the background of the methodology and a concise section on earlier similar research have made it more understandable and clarified the context of current research. Conversely, cutting down the amount of text dedicated explaining the historical background has made the totality more focused. Overall I think the updated work is an interesting piece of scholarship and could be recommended for publication as it is.

Thank You once again to the editors for considering me for a further review of the manuscript. Most of the suggestions were considered, and the manuscript was revised accordingly. On my side, I have two suggestions: provide a proper location map of the site and increase the size of the photographs used in the manuscript. 

I strongly recommend this manuscript for publication. Thank You. 

Peer review

General comments

Title and abstract

Depending on where the final paper is to be submitted, the abstract might need some shortening – in that case I recommend that the historical background be limited to a few general phrases (since the history of the site is not the main topic of the paper).

Introduction

I think that the introduction should be begun with a description of the project at hand, and only then the background should be given (line 46 onwards). At the moment, the Introduction chapter does not clearly explain the motivation of the study and does not spell out the research question. Rather, it focuses on explaining the historical background and development of the monastery. While interesting by itself, all this material should be separated into a subdivision of its own, or depending on the word limits available, cut down and made the ending part of the Introduction.

As the main topic of the paper are the UAS-based measurements and the processing of the data, it would be appropriate to have some background information about earlier research and experiments in these fields. The methods and software used are well established now, so there is no need for an extensive survey of earlier publications – one or two paragraphs would be enough. Here the concept of “digital storyline” could be explained more, perhaps with using examples from other projects.

Regarding the research project context of the paper, its background should be spelled out more clearly: mainly, which institution runs the research project “Digital Mystras”, who is funding it, and in which timescale is it active?

Methods

Results

The results are interesting and well presented, except for the ultimate question: where is the end result to be used? Is the geodatabase “Castle City of Mystras (lines 203–204) intended for public or other researchers, and how and when can it be accessed? Regardless, the result are impressive, and I hope there will be more detailed research based on the now created geodatabase and its functions.

Discussion

Conclusions are adequately supported by the results. A more detailed description of the future plans would help contextualise the project – for instance, are they intended to be used in some installations at the site of Mystras or in some mobile application aimed for the visitors, or only for research purposes? Here some evaluating of the results would be adequate, as well – what was the research question, and do the results answer it?

Other comments

Some typos and other mistakes still remain in the paper, and the language could use a check from a professional in English language. Tables and figures are well selected and also referred to in the text, with the exception of Figure 1 – the reference to Figure 2 in line 60 should most likely to be Figure 1.

Concerning the references section, some entries (at least Chatzidakis 1992, Chase 2003, Georgiades 2002, Runciman 1980 and Sinos 2021) seem not to be referred to in the actual text.

I am thankful to the editors and management team for allowing me to review this research paper. Though I am not an expert in the field of Photogrammetry, so I might not be able to help the authors with the technicalities, but I will try my best to give a conscience review along with sharing my opinions regarding the writing….  

1.      The paper intends to give a detailed summary of the work that had been carried out to digitally document the Monastery of Brontochion of Mystras located towards the southwest of the city. The entire construction of the monastery was done in several phases and through the digital documentation the authors tried to depict the above. 

2.      I found that the aims and objectives of the article are very clear and precise. 

3.      The article contains a detailed description of the methodology. This is good indeed but can be concise. 

4.       It would be good indeed if the authors could add a separate section by analyzing critically why and how the city is important to understand the historicity of the region/country. 

5.      While reading I found that the authors several times gave the reference of the years but didn’t give the chronological marker (BCE/CE/AD). So I will highly recommend the authors to put the chronological markers. 

6.      On Line number ‘93’ please correct the word representation. It’s written as ‘repre-sentation’

7.      The authors should emphasize to increase the size of the figures which they put in the article 

8.      Also I will recommend including proper maps of the city (Location Map and city layout with all existing architectures [which I can see already in figure 7(a), but it should be properly geo-referenced])

9.      I found the subject matter of the article is good and if the corrections are being made then the paper will make a significant contribution to scholarship.