INFEWS: US-China-Quantifying complex adaptive FEW systems with a coupled agent-based modeling framework

随着人口的增长和经济的发展，水、能源和粮食安全及其相互关系的挑战已成为全球关注的首要问题。当问题的规模缩小到像一个大流域这样的区域层面时，这些挑战之间就会出现细微的差异。这是因为流域规模的食物、能源和水(少数)系统本质上是一个自然-人类耦合的复杂系统，应该统称为少数联系。在这个网络中，自然过程(例如，供水的降雨径流)和人类行为(例如，能源和粮食商品市场和政策)在不同的时空尺度上是相互依存的。与这几个关系相关的知识和能力差距很大，尤其是在数据和建模环境中。该项目通过开发一种新的数学建模框架来解决这些差距，以破译复杂的适应性食品-能源-水系统(FEWSoS)。这一建模工具可以确保政策的连贯性和利益攸关方之间的协调，以建立协同效应并产生共同惠益(例如，同时改善水、能源和粮食部门的安全)，使我们能够应对未来跨多个部门的挑战。该项目将利用利哈伊大学的山顶倡议进行教育推广，允许参与小规模的跨学科项目。他们还将邀请本科生参加STEM学科的高级课程和平衡课程。他们还将聘请一名来自埃塞俄比亚的国际学生作为该项目的一部分。最后，该项目将在美国和中国调查人员之间举行启动和总结会。拟议的建模框架将以粮食、能源和水子系统之间以及人与自然系统之间在多个时间和空间尺度上的联系的基于主体的表示为中心。三个主要研究目标是：(1)通过清查和评估公共和地方数据以及来自食品、能源和水部门的信息，构建一个全面的知识平台，包括一套关于可持续发展、脆弱性和复原力的量化指标；(2)建立一个时空分布的建模框架，从地方到河流-流域尺度分析给定的FEWSos中的食物-能量-水相互作用。将借助水文农业经济模型(食品模块)、能源生产成本模型(能源模块)和基于过程的水文模型(水模块)来量化粮食、能源和水之间的相互作用；(3)测试开发的FEWSoS模型框架在美国和中国的两个国际流域：哥伦比亚河和湄公河的适用性，以阐明这些FEWSos的异同，从而产生可移植到其他流域的新认识。PIS来自美国和中国团队在水资源管理、水文建模、能源市场建模和水文农业经济建模方面的不同背景和经验为研究生和博士后提供了跨学科合作的绝佳机会。美国的动员会和中国的总结会将允许所有PI从头到尾与利益相关者接触，确保模型开发与现实世界的需求相呼应。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With growing populations and economic development, the challenges of water, energy, and food security, as well as their inter-relations, have risen to the forefront as global concerns. When the scale of the problem is reduced to a regional level like a large river basin, nuances across these challenges emerge. This is because the basin-scale food, energy, and water (FEW) systems are essentially a coupled natural-human complex system of systems and should be collectively denoted as FEW nexus. Within the nexus both natural processes (e.g., rainfall-runoff for water supply) and human behavior (e.g., energy and food commodity markets and policies) are interdependent at hierarchical spatiotemporal scales. There are significant knowledge and capability gaps associated with this FEW nexus, particularly in the context of data and modeling. This project addresses these gaps by developing a new mathematical modeling framework to decipher the complex, adaptive food-energy-water system of systems (FEWSoS). This modeling tool can ensure policy coherence and coordination among stakeholders to build synergies and generate co-benefits (e.g., improving security in water, energy and food sectors simultaneously) that enable us to address the future challenges across multiple sectors. The project will leverage Mountaintop Initiative at Lehigh University for educational outreach by allowing engagement of small groups of interdisciplinary projects. They will also engage undergraduate students in the ADVANCE program and the BALANCE program in the STEM disciplines. They will also engage an international student from Ethiopia as a part of this project. Finally, the project will have a kickoff and wrap-up meeting between the US and China investigators. The proposed modeling framework will be centering on an agent-based representation of the linkages among food, energy and water sub-systems and between human and physical systems across multiple temporal and spatial scales. The three main research objectives are: (1) Constructing a comprehensive knowledge platform with a set of quantitative metrics for sustainability, vulnerability, and resilience of a FEWSoS via inventory and evaluation of both public and local data and information from the food, energy and water sectors; (2) Developing a spatially and temporally distributed modeling framework that analyzes the food-energy-water interactions in a given FEWSoS from local to river-basin scales. The interactions among food, energy, and water will be quantified with the aid of a hydro-agro-economic model (food module), an energy production cost model (energy module) and a process-based hydrologic model (water module); (3) Testing the utility of the developed FEWSoS modeling framework over two international river basins in the U.S. and China: the Columbia River and the Mekong River to elucidate similarities and differences in these FEWSoS, hence generating new understanding that is transferable to other river basins. PIs diverse backgrounds and experiences in water resources management, hydrologic modeling, energy market modeling, and hydro-agro-economic modeling from both the U.S. and China teams provide an excellent opportunity for graduate students and postdocs to work together across disciplines. The kick-off meeting in the US and the wrap-up meeting in China will allow all PIs to engage stakeholders from the beginning till the end of the project and make sure the model development echoes real world needs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.