Resilience Analysis Framework for a Water–Energy–Food Nexus System Under Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change impacts the water–energy–food security; given the complexities of interlinkages in the nexus system, these effects may become exacerbated when feedback loops magnify detrimental effects and create vicious cycles. Resilience is understood as the system’s adaptive ability to maintain its functionality even when the system is being affected by a disturbance or shock; in WEF nexus systems, climate change impacts are considered disturbances/shocks and may affect the system in different ways, depending on its resilience. Future global challenges will severely affect all vital resources and threaten environmental resilience. In this article, we present a resilience analysis framework for a water–energy–food nexus system under climate change, and we identify how such systems can become more resilient with the implementation of policies. We showcase results in the national case study of Greece. Parametric sensitivity analysis for socioecological systems is performed to identify which parameter the model is the most sensitive to. The case study is based on the structure of a system dynamics model that maps sector-specific data from major national and international databases while causal loop diagrams and stock-and-flow diagrams are presented. Through engineering and ecological resilience metrics, we quantify system resilience and identify which policy renders the system more resilient in terms of how much perturbation it can absorb and how fast it bounces back to its original state, if at all. Two policies are tested, and the framework is implemented to identify which policy is the most beneficial for the system in terms of resilience.

SustainGraph: A knowledge graph for tracking the progress and the interlinking among the sustainable development goals’ targets

“…Resilience can be assessed successfully only through such systemic analyses (Ioannou and Laspidou, 2022). Along these lines, a KG can support the provision of input data to such models and supplement the produced intelligence through the identification of hidden relationships and/or patterns.…”

Vulnerability evaluation and prediction of the water-energy-food-ecology nexus in the Yangtze River Economic Belt based on TOPSIS, neighborhood rough set and support vector machine

“…However, most existing studies focus on the core relationship between water, energy and food systems. Although some scholars have added climate (Ioannou and Laspidou, 2022), land and other aspects to conduct more indepth research, there are still fewer studies that integrate the ecology system into the WEF nexus, and they are focused on developing countries with unstable social development, scarce natural resources, weak sustainable development concepts and poor ecological environment (Shi et al, 2020). It is mainly because modeling the WEFE nexus faces the challenge of reducing multidimensional and interdependent uncertainties.…”

Cross-Mapping Important Interactions between Water-Energy-Food Nexus Indices and the SDGs

“…Several articles have been published addressing fundamental human needs using the WEF nexus approach [19][20][21][22], the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem Nexus approach [23], the WEF nexus approach under climate change combined with systemic resilience [24][25][26], and also the WEF nexus approach including Land Use and Climate [27]. Additional research focuses on how the SDGs interact with one another [28,29].…”