Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Food-Water-Energy Nexus: Enabling adaptive integration of technology to enhance community resilience

全球许多城市都面临着管理食物、水和能源系统的严峻挑战。这些挑战源于这样一个事实，即粮食、水和能源问题往往彼此紧密联系，不仅是地方问题，而且是全球问题。这就是所谓的食物-水-能源(FWE)关系。当地水问题的有效解决可能会在当地造成新的粮食或能源问题，或者在全球范围内造成新的水问题。在地方范围内，很难预测在粮食、水和能源系统内，无论是在地方还是在全球范围内，一个问题的解决办法是否可持续。围绕这一联系的创新解决方案对于使城市能够更好地管理其食品、水和能源系统并了解不同解决方案的好处和权衡尤为重要。该奖项支持美国研究人员参与一个由29个国家通过联合贝尔蒙论坛-联合规划倡议(JPI)欧洲城市计划竞争性选择的项目。可持续城市化全球倡议(SUGI)/食物-水-能源联系是一个多边倡议，旨在支持将全球各地零散的研究和专业知识聚集在一起的研究项目，以找到应对食物-水-能源联系挑战的创新解决方案。这一呼吁寻求开发更具弹性、更实用的城市解决方案，以造福更广泛的利益相关者。世界人口的快速城市化突显了这一重点的重要性。邀请国际合作伙伴为这一挑战制定解决方案。申请的资金将用于支持美国参与者在财团中进行合作，财团由至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成，并将自然科学家、社会科学家和研究用户(如公民社会、非政府组织和工业界)聚集在一起。来自其他国家的参与者通过其国家资助组织获得资助。该项目旨在通过分析流入、流出和流出社区/城市的材料和能量的分布式生产和存储来生成可操作的信息，给出社区/城市的消费模式和与各种联系相关联的供应链。该项目将开发一个多尺度建模框架，以解决阿姆斯特丹、奥兰多和巴黎三个城市环境中影响食物-水-能量关系的多种应激源之间的相互关系。这些模型将调查城市人口增加、土地利用快速变化、社会、经济和治理规范的变化、气候变异性的加剧以及生态系统服务变化在每个被调查的联系中的影响，以阐明每个地点由此产生的水、碳和生态足迹。这些信息最终应使我们能够了解各种驱动因素之间的取舍和平衡及其对联系各部分的影响，这将有助于制定各种设想，使每个地点的粮食-水-联系组成部分的可持续性得到最优化。这些信息将被用来了解关键技术在与不同城市规划情景相关的不同类型联系中的作用，以及不同的社会网络如何帮助评估不同文化背景下对这些潜在技术的接受程度。这些知识可以用来理解地点和社区对潜在场景的物理和社会适应能力。这一奖项反映了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。

Many cities across the globe are facing difficult challenges managing their food, water and energy systems. The challenges stem from the fact that the issues of food, water and energy are often tightly connected with each other, not only locally but also globally. This is known as the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus. An effective solution to a local water problem may cause new local problems with food or energy, or cause new water problems at the global level. On a local scale, it is difficult to anticipate whether solutions to one issue in the nexus are sustainable across food, water and energy systems, both at the local and the global scale. Innovative solutions that encompass the nexus are particularly important to enable cities to better manage their food, water and energy systems and understand the benefits and tradeoffs for different solutions. This award supports U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 29-country initiative through the joint Belmont Forum- Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe. The Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative (SUGI)/Food-Water-Energy Nexus is a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that bring together the fragmented research and expertise across the globe to find innovative solutions to the Food-Water-Energy Nexus challenge. The call seeks to develop more resilient, applied urban solutions to benefit a much wider range of stakeholders. The rapid urbanization of the world's population underscores the importance of this focus. International partners were invited to develop solutions for this challenge. The funds requested will be used to support U.S. participants to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries and that bring together natural scientists, social scientists and research users (e.g., civil society, NGOs, and industry). Participants from other countries are funded through their national funding organizations. This project aims to generate actionable information by analyzing the distributed production and storage of materials and energy flows into, out of, and within a community/city given their consumption patterns and supply chains associated with various FWE nexuses. This project will develop a multi-scale modeling framework to address the inter-relationship between multiple stressors affecting the food-water-energy nexus in 3 urban environments, Amsterdam, Orlando, and Paris. The models will investigate the impacts of increasing metropolitan populations, rapid land use change, shifting social, economic and governance norms, escalating climate variability, and changing ecosystem services within each of the investigated FWE nexus to elucidate the resultant water, carbon, and ecological footprint for each location. This information should ultimately enable us to understand the trade-offs and balances between various drivers and their impacts on each segment on the nexus which will help to develop scenarios that can optimize the sustainability of the food-water-nexus components for each location. This information will be used to understand the role of key technologies in different types of nexuses associated with different urban planning scenarios affect the final sustainable solution; and how different social networks help evaluate the acceptance of these potential technologies across different cultural contexts. This knowledge can then be used to understand both the physical and social resilience of the location and community to potential scenarios.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.