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

随着人口增长和经济发展，水、能源和粮食安全的挑战及其相互关系已成为全球关注的焦点。当问题的规模缩小到区域一级，如一个大型河流流域时，这些挑战之间的细微差别就会出现。这是因为流域尺度的食物、能源和水（FEW）系统本质上是一个耦合的自然-人类复杂系统，应统称为FEW关系。在这一联系中，两个自然过程（例如，供水的径流）和人类行为（例如，能源和粮食商品市场和政策）在分层次的时空尺度上相互依存。与这一少数人工作联系相关的知识和能力差距很大，特别是在数据和建模方面。该项目通过开发一个新的数学建模框架来解决这些差距，以破译复杂的自适应食物-能源-水系统（FEWSoS）。这一建模工具可确保利益攸关方之间的政策一致性和协调，以建立协同增效作用并产生共同效益（例如，同时改善水、能源和粮食部门的安全），使我们能够应对多个部门的未来挑战。该项目将利用利哈伊大学的山顶倡议，通过允许跨学科项目小组的参与来进行教育推广。他们还将让本科生参与STEM学科的ADVANCE计划和BALANCE计划。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议。拟议的建模框架将以基于代理的方式表示食物、能源和水子系统之间以及人类和物理系统之间在多个时间和空间尺度上的联系为中心。三个主要研究目标是：（1）通过对来自粮食、能源和水部门的公共和地方数据和信息的清点和评估，构建一个综合知识平台，其中包括一套关于FEWSoS可持续性、脆弱性和复原力的量化指标;（2）开发一个空间和时间分布的建模框架，分析从当地到河流的给定FEWSoS中的食物-能量-水相互作用。流域尺度粮食、能源和水之间的相互作用将借助一个水文农业经济模型加以量化（食品模块），能源生产成本模型（能量模块）和基于过程的水文模型（水模块）;（3）在美国和中国的两个国际河流流域测试开发的FEWSoS建模框架的实用性：哥伦比亚河和湄公河，以阐明这些FEWSoS的相似性和差异，从而产生新的理解，可转移到其他河流流域。来自美国和中国团队的PI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。在美国举行的启动会议和在中国举行的总结会议将使所有项目研究者能够从项目开始到结束与利益相关者进行接触，并确保模型开发与真实的世界需求相呼应。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.