Optimizing dynamics of integrated food–energy–water systems under the risk of climate change

Abstract

Integrated management of food-energy-water systems (FEWS) requires a unified, flexible and reproducible approach to incorporate the interdependence between sectors, and include the risk of non-stationary environmental variations due to climate change. Most of the recently developed methods in the literature fall short of one or more aspects in such integration. In this article, we propose a novel approach based upon fundamentals of decision theory and reinforcement learning that (1) quantifies and propagates uncertainty, (2) incorporates resource interdependence, (3) includes the impact of uncontrolled variables such as climate variations, and (4) adaptively optimizes management decisions to minimize the costs and environmental impacts of crop production. Moreover, the proposed method is robust to problem-specific complexities and is easily reproducible. We illustrate the framework on a real-world case study in Ventura County, California.

Where Will ‘Water-Energy-Food’ Research Go Next?—Visualisation Review and Prospect

“…As shown in Figure 11, the quantitative methods for the WEF nexus can be divided into two categories: (1) calculation and prediction, and (2) evaluation and optimisation. Calculation and prediction studies focus on the consumption of WEF systems and their environmental influences [102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111]. Evaluation and optimisation research evaluates the development of WEF and seek the best scheme for managing WEF through optimisation models [112][113][114][115][116].…”

Beyond Profitable Shifts to Green Energies, towards Energy Sustainability

“…In [9][10][11][12], the authors look at energy production with the aim of maintaining market sustainability, while [13][14][15] consider the technological and economic sustainability of the power plants themselves and the need for newer renewable electricity generation methods with lower carbon emissions. Other studies such as [16] look at the sustainability of energy sources in their ability to provide food or even the combined water-food-energy nexus under various scenarios [17][18][19][20][21]. In addition to these, other factors such as the social impact of electricity systems [22] or the risk of providing the required resources for electricity production [23,24] have been proposed as other considerations in the definition of sustainability.…”

Consequences of climate change on food-energy-water systems in arid regions without agricultural adaptation, analyzed using FEWCalc and DSSAT

“…The agent-based model (ABM) framework NetLogo was used to construct FEWCalc (Anderson and Dragićević, 2018;Guijun et al, 2017;Hu et al, 2018;Tisue and Wilensky, 2004;Wilensky, 1999). Because dynamic modeling system had its roots in business and expanded to urban and environmental problems (Forrester, 1971;Meadows, 2008;Morecroft, 2015;Sterman, 2000), and use in the food-energy-water nexus has only emerged recently (Al-Saidi and Elagib, 2017;Memarzadeh et al, 2019;Phetheet et al, in review;Schulterbrandt Gragg et al, 2018). FEWCalc is designed to engage stakeholders using the framework of farm incomes.…”