Comments on “Wind Gust Detection and Impact Prediction for Wind Turbines”

We refute statements in “Zhou, K., et al. Wind gust detection and impact prediction for wind turbines. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 514.” about the impracticality of motion estimation methods to derive two-component vector wind fields from single scanning aerosol lidar data. Our assertion is supported by recently published results on the performance of two image-based motion estimation methods: cross-correlation (CC) and wavelet-based optical flow (WOF). The characteristics and performances of CC and WOF are compared with those of a two-dimensional variational (2D-VAR) method that was applied to radial velocity fields from a single scanning Doppler lidar. The algorithmic aspects of WOF and 2D-VAR are reviewed and we conclude that these two approaches are in fact similar and practical.