Developing food, water and energy nexus workflows

There is a growing recognition of the interdependencies among the supply systems that rely upon food, water and energy. Billions of people lack safe and sufficient access to these systems, coupled with a rapidly growing global demand and increasing resource constraints. Modeling frameworks are considered one of the few means available to understand the complex interrelationships among the sectors, however development of nexus related frameworks has been limited. We describe three open- source models well known in their respective domains (i.e. TerrSysMP, WOFOST and SWAT) where components of each if combined could help decision-makers address the nexus issue. We propose as a first step the development of simple workflows utilizing essential variables and addressing components of the above-mentioned models which can act as building-blocks to be used ultimately in a comprehensive nexus model framework. The outputs of the workflows and the model framework are designed to address the SDG

Modelling and Assessment of Biomass-PV Tradeoff within the Framework of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus

Food, water and energy are three essential resources for human well-being, poverty reduction and sustainable development. These resources are very much linked to one another, meaning that the actions in any one particular area often can have effects in one or both of the other areas. At the same time, an economy's shift towards climate neutrality requires a massive expansion of energy production from renewable sources. Among these ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) and biomass will be expanded massively to meet the clean energy generation goal, simultaneously influence regional water and food availability and supply security. It is crucial to understand Food-Water-Energy Nexus (FWE) nexus during the energy transition. However, current studies have limitation both methodically (qualitative assessments) and spatially (aggregated data on a national level is more available). Firstly, a consistent share input data set in geographical format was created with the resolution of building/field. An energy simulation platform (SimStadt) was then extended with new workflows on biomass potential, ground-mounted PV potential, food demand/potential, and urban water demand. Combining with existing workflows on urban building heating/electricity demand and roof PV potential, the dissertation created a complete simulation environmental covering most-relating FWE topics in energy transition with consistent input and output structures at a fine resolution. Secondly, the most representative inter-linkage between ground-mounted PV and biomass on hinterland is investigated in details with the new tools. The output data of each field from ground-mounted PV and biomass workflows are linked and ranked according to the scenarios emphasizing PV yield, feasibility, profit, or biomass. The assessment and scenarios are applied at three representative German counties with distinguished land-use structures and geometries as case studies. Results show that current policies does not guarantee the technically efficient allocation of fields. The optimal technical strategy is to follow the individual market profit drive, which is very likely, at the same time for the social good, to achieve high PV yields with limited biomass losses and more significant crop water-saving effects. The local food, water, and energy demands are also included as a metric for resource allocation on the potential side. Besides focusing on the biomass-PV tradeoff simulation and analysis, pioneer works have also been done to test the transferability of the method in cases outside Germany, and the complement of urban solid waste to agricultural biomass is explored to achieve energy autarky

The MESSAGEix Integrated Assessment Model and the ix modeling platform (ixmp)

The MESSAGE Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) developed by IIASA has been a central tool of energy-environment-economy systems analysis in the global scientific and policy arena. It played a major role in the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); it provided marker scenarios of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs); and it underpinned the analysis of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). Alas, to provide relevant analysis for current and future challenges, numerical models of human and earth systems need to support higher spatial and temporal resolution, facilitate integration of data sources and methodologies across disciplines, and become open and transparent regarding the underlying data, methods, and the scientific workflow. In this manuscript, we present the building blocks of a new framework for an integrated assessment modeling platform; the \ecosystem" comprises: i) an open-source GAMS implementation of the MESSAGE energy++ system model integrated with the MACRO economic model; ii) a Java/database backend for version-controlled data management, iii) interfaces for the scientific programming languages Python & R for efficient input data and results processing workflows; and iv) a web-browser-based user interface for model/scenario management and intuitive \drag-and-drop" visualization of results. The framework aims to facilitate the highest level of openness for scientific analysis, bridging the need for transparency with efficient data processing and powerful numerical solvers. The platform is geared towards easy integration of data sources and models across disciplines, spatial scales and temporal disaggregation levels. All tools apply best-practice in collaborative software development, and comprehensive documentation of all building blocks and scripts is generated directly from the GAMS equations and the Java/Python/R source code

Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict in Northwest Africa

Examines how climate change affects the number of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa traveling through Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and Morocco; increased security risks in the region; how these factors exacerbate one another; and intercontinental implications

The science-policy interfaces of the European network for observing our changing planet : From Earth Observation data to policy-oriented decisions

This paper reports on major outcomes of the ERA-PLANET (The European network for observing our changing planet) project, which was funded under Horizon 2020 ERA-net co-funding scheme. ERA-PLANET strengthened the European Research Area in the domain of Earth Observation (EO) in coherence with the European partici-pation to Group on Earth Observation and the Copernicus European Union's Earth Observation programme. ERA -PLANET was implemented through four projects focused on smart cities and resilient societies (SMURBS), resource efficiency and environmental management (GEOEssential), global changes and environmental treaties (iGOSP) and polar areas and natural resources (iCUPE). These projects developed specific science-policy workflows and interfaces to address selected environmental policy issues and design cost-effective strategies aiming to achieve targeted objectives. Key Enabling Technologies were implemented to enhancing 'data to knowledge' transition for supporting environmental policy making. Data cube technologies, the Virtual Earth Laboratory, Earth Observation ontologies and Knowledge Platforms were developed and used for such applications.SMURBS brought a substantial contribution to resilient cities and human settlements topics that were adopted by GEO as its 4th engagement priority, bringing the urban resilience topic in the GEO agenda on par with climate change, sustainable development and disaster risk reduction linked to environmental policies. GEOEssential is contributing to the development of Essential Variables (EVs) concept, which is encouraging and should allow the EO community to complete the description of the Earth System with EVs in a close future. This will clearly improve our capacity to address intertwined environmental and development policies as a Nexus.iGOSP supports the implementation of the GEO Flagship on Mercury (GOS4M) and the GEO Initiative on POPs (GOS4POPs) by developing a new integrated approach for global real-time monitoring of environmental quality with respect to air, water and human matrices contamination by toxic substances, like mercury and persistent organic pollutants. iGOSP developed end-user-oriented Knowledge Hubs that provide data repository systems integrated with data management consoles and knowledge information systems.The main outcomes from iCUPE are the novel and comprehensive data sets and a modelling activity that contributed to delivering science-based insights for the Arctic region. Applications enable defining and moni-toring of Arctic Essential Variables and sets up processes towards UN2030 SDGs that include health (SDG 3), clean water resources and sanitation (SDGs 6 and 14).Peer reviewe

DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED MODEL FOR THE CORN, ETHANOL, AND BEEF SYSTEMS USING A LOOSELY COUPLED WEB FRAMEWORK

With the global population approaching 9 billion people by the year 2050, the world’s food, energy, and water (FEW) resources must be used more intelligently to provide for everyone. While we understand how individual FEW systems behave using modeling, we cannot understand the full environmental and production impacts of decisions in each system without understanding how they are all linked together. An approach to coupling these systems is starting with identifying a few highly interconnected FEW systems. The corn, ethanol, and beef systems are large economic and agricultural drivers in the Midwest United States and are highly linked. Many individual models exist for each system and are wrapped in software to be used for decision support. This thesis explores the integration of the corn, ethanol, and beef systems by connecting existing models using a loosely coupled web framework. Each model is wrapped in Python code and linked, also in Python, using connections that reflect the real world system. Environmental impact of the full integrated system is done using life cycle assessment that accounts for inputs and outputs for each model. Simulations done with the models predict the resource production of the integrated system given user inputs and the full environmental impacts in water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The objectives of this thesis are: (1) to review literature of FEW nexus integration by coupling models, (2) integrating the crop and biofuel systems with service-oriented architecture, and (3) integrating the corn, ethanol, and beef systems with service-oriented architecture. Scenario analyses are done to test the models’ responses to different management, climate, and resource demand scenarios. Advisors: Jeyamkondan Subbiah and Deepak Keshwan

DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED MODEL FOR THE CORN, ETHANOL, AND BEEF SYSTEMS USING A LOOSELY COUPLED WEB FRAMEWORK

With the global population approaching 9 billion people by the year 2050, the world’s food, energy, and water (FEW) resources must be used more intelligently to provide for everyone. While we understand how individual FEW systems behave using modeling, we cannot understand the full environmental and production impacts of decisions in each system without understanding how they are all linked together. An approach to coupling these systems is starting with identifying a few highly interconnected FEW systems. The corn, ethanol, and beef systems are large economic and agricultural drivers in the Midwest United States and are highly linked. Many individual models exist for each system and are wrapped in software to be used for decision support. This thesis explores the integration of the corn, ethanol, and beef systems by connecting existing models using a loosely coupled web framework. Each model is wrapped in Python code and linked, also in Python, using connections that reflect the real world system. Environmental impact of the full integrated system is done using life cycle assessment that accounts for inputs and outputs for each model. Simulations done with the models predict the resource production of the integrated system given user inputs and the full environmental impacts in water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The objectives of this thesis are: (1) to review literature of FEW nexus integration by coupling models, (2) integrating the crop and biofuel systems with service-oriented architecture, and (3) integrating the corn, ethanol, and beef systems with service-oriented architecture. Scenario analyses are done to test the models’ responses to different management, climate, and resource demand scenarios. Advisors: Jeyamkondan Subbiah and Deepak Keshwan

Essential earth observation variables for high-level multi-scale indicators and policies

Several holistic approaches are based on the description of socio-ecological systems to address the sustainability challenge. Essential Variables (EVs) have the potential to support these approaches by describing the status of the Earth system through monitoring and modeling. The different classes of EVs can be organized along the environmental policy framework of Drivers, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses. The EV concept represents an opportunity to strengthen monitoring systems by providing observations to seize the fundamental dimensions of the Earth system The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) is a partnership of 113 nations and 134 participating organizations in 2021 that are dedicated to making Earth Observation (EO) data available globally to inform about the state of the environment and enable data-driven decision processes. GEO is building the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, a set of coordinated and independent EO, information and processing systems that interoperate to provide access to EO for users in the public and private sectors. The progresses made in the development of various classes of EVs are described with their main policy targets, Internet links and key references The paper reviews the literature on EVs and describes the main contributions of the EU GEOEssential project to integrate EVs within the work plan of GEO in order to better address selected environmental policies and the SDGs. A new GEO-EVs community has been set to discuss about the current status of the EVs, exchange knowledge, experiences and assess the gaps to be solved in their communities of providers and users. A set of four traits characterizing an EV was put forward to describe the entire socio-ecological system of planet Earth: Essentiality, Evolvability, Unambiguity, and Feasibility. A workflow from the identification of EO data sources to the final visualization of SDG 15.3.1 indicators on land degradation is demonstrated, spanning through the use of different EVs, the definition of the knowledge base on this indicator, the implementation of the workflow in the VLab (a cloud-based processing infrastructure), the presentation of the outputs on a dedicated dashboard and the corresponding narrative through a story map. The concept of EV started in the climate sphere and spread to other domains of the earth system but less so in socio-economic activities. More work is therefore needed to converge on a common definition and criteria in order to complete the implementation of EVs in all GEO focus areas. EVs should screen the entire Earth's social-ecological system, providing a trusted and long-term foundation for interdisciplinary approaches such as ecological footprinting, planetary boundaries, disaster risk reduction, and nexus frameworks, as well as many other policy frameworks such as the SDG

DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED MODEL FOR THE CORN, ETHANOL, AND BEEF SYSTEMS USING A LOOSELY COUPLED WEB FRAMEWORK

With the global population approaching 9 billion people by the year 2050, the world’s food, energy, and water (FEW) resources must be used more intelligently to provide for everyone. While we understand how individual FEW systems behave using modeling, we cannot understand the full environmental and production impacts of decisions in each system without understanding how they are all linked together. An approach to coupling these systems is starting with identifying a few highly interconnected FEW systems. The corn, ethanol, and beef systems are large economic and agricultural drivers in the Midwest United States and are highly linked. Many individual models exist for each system and are wrapped in software to be used for decision support. This thesis explores the integration of the corn, ethanol, and beef systems by connecting existing models using a loosely coupled web framework. Each model is wrapped in Python code and linked, also in Python, using connections that reflect the real world system. Environmental impact of the full integrated system is done using life cycle assessment that accounts for inputs and outputs for each model. Simulations done with the models predict the resource production of the integrated system given user inputs and the full environmental impacts in water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The objectives of this thesis are: (1) to review literature of FEW nexus integration by coupling models, (2) integrating the crop and biofuel systems with service-oriented architecture, and (3) integrating the corn, ethanol, and beef systems with service-oriented architecture. Scenario analyses are done to test the models’ responses to different management, climate, and resource demand scenarios. Advisors: Jeyamkondan Subbiah and Deepak Keshwan