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

随着全球人口增加到75亿人甚至更多，人们越来越担心地球在食品、水和能源系统(FEWS)多个相互作用的维度上的承载能力。该项目的总体目标是通过对实现可持续性所需的权衡进行多因素评估，使过渡到可持续的FEWS成为可能。该项目将在普渡大学和三个中国学术机构(能源与环境政策研究中心、水文水资源与水利工程国家重点实验室和中国农业政策中心)之间建立一个美国和中国合作的虚拟研究中心。FEWS-VRC将向两个方向推进定量系统可持续性分析的前沿：1)通过扩展农业生产与土地-水利用相结合的网格模型的使用，评估异质性的作用；以及2)分析农业与新能源，特别是生物能源之间的相互作用。开发的工具将建立在科学门户平台(FEWS-HUB)上，该平台将为解决未来关键的研究和规划问题提供一个量化的、可扩展的基础，从而提高世界上两个最大经济体的FEWS主题的决策能力。通过综合评估办法，该项目将在几个方面增加现有的知识：农业生产的网格化建模；以及网格化农业模型与详细的一般均衡模型的耦合。国家层面的空间模型过于粗糙，无法处理农业生产的异质性。此外，由于水越来越成为农业的制约因素，在流域范围内将农业生产和水文模型联系起来至关重要。这项研究的一个预期结果是一个框架，用于评估网格水平异质性的重要性，以及与水可获得性有关的潜在“热点”。第二个目标是将普渡开发的设想模型与SIMPLE-G相结合，从而将后一种模型扩展到包括能源系统。“设想”是一个综合评估模型，有一个大的能源子模块，可评估生物能源的变化，包括对土地利用的影响。将这两个完全不同的模型结合起来，将使新的研究问题能够在一个易于处理和可追踪的框架中得到解决。可持续发展是一个全球公认的重大挑战问题，因此提高FEWS框架中的观测和预测能力将对食品、水、能源和国家安全产生积极影响。该奖项反映了NSF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。

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.