Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS: U.S.-China): A multi-scale integrated modeling approach to managing the transition to sustainability

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As global population rises to 7.5 billion people and beyond, concern is growing about the planet's carrying capacity across the multiple and interacting dimensions of food, water and energy systems (FEWS). The overarching goal of this project is to enable the transition to sustainable FEWS by achieving the multi-factorial assessment of tradeoffs needed to achieve sustainability. This project will build a U.S.- China collaboration framed as a Virtual Research Center (FEWS-VRC) between Purdue University and three Chinese academic institutions (Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, and Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy). FEWS-VRC will push the frontier of quantitative systems sustainability analysis in two directions: 1) assessing the role of heterogeneity by extending the use of gridded modeling of agricultural production coupled with land-water use; and 2) analysis of interactions between agriculture and new sources of energy, particularly bio-based energy. The tools developed will be built on a Science Gateway platform (FEWS-HUB) that will provide a quantitative, extensible basis for solving crucial future research and planning problems thus improving decision-making capabilities in FEWS topics within the world's two largest economies. Though the integrated assessment approach, this project will add to existing knowledge in several dimensions: gridded modeling of agricultural production; and coupling of the gridded agricultural model to a detailed general equilibrium model. Spatial models at a national level are too coarse to deal with the heterogeneity of agricultural production. Moreover, as water is ever more becoming a constraining factor for agriculture, it is vital to link agricultural production and hydrological models at basin scale. An expected outcome of this study is a framework to assess the importance of gridded-level heterogeneity as well as potential 'hotspots' linked to water availability. A second goal is coupling the Purdue-developed ENVISAGE Model to SIMPLE-G thus extending the latter model to include energy systems. ENVISAGE is an integrated assessment model with a large energy sub-module that provides an assessment of changes in bio-based energy including land-use implications. Coupling these two disparate models will allow new research questions to be addressed in a tractable and traceable framework. Sustainable development is a globally acknowledged grand challenge problem so improving observational and predictive capabilities in the FEWS framework will have positive impacts on food, water, energy, and national security.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.