Human choices in urban areas drive significant changes in both social and physical landscape features, so it is imperative to integrate social dynamics in analyses of the urban food, energy and water systems (FEWS) nexus. However, dense human populations and activities generate disproportionate negative impacts for intensive energy use, increased global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), elevated temperatures, high levels of water consumption/wastewater production, and pollution of air, land and water. These areas support human interactions and result in innovations such as the sharing economy, renewable energy transitions, and green infrastructure that could lead to increased sustainability. Over 55% of people in the world, and 80% of people in the United States, live and work in urban areas. The effort emphasizes use of open-source simulation models and expert knowledge to guide modeling for individual and combined systems in the urban FEWS nexus. When complete, these models will quantify energy use and water quality outcomes for current systems, and determine if undesirable environmental effects are decreased and local food supply is increased with different configurations of socioeconomic and biophysical factors in urban and urban-adjacent areas. Our approach involves data-driven co-simulation to enable coupling of disparate food, energy and water simulation models across a range of spatial and temporal scales. The ultimate goal of our research program is to enhance understanding of the urban FEWS nexus so as to improve system function and management, increase resilience, and enhance sustainability.
FEWS INTO RED REVIEW DRIVERS
We create a framework to enable simultaneous analyses of climate dynamics, changes in land cover, built forms, energy use, and environmental outcomes associated with a set of drivers of system change related to policy, crop management, technology, social interaction, and market forces affecting food production.
We describe preliminary work toward an integrated urban food-energy-water systems (FEWS) analysis using co-simulation for assessment of current and future conditions, with an emphasis on local (urban and urban-adjacent) food production. Integrated study of urban areas requires a system-of-systems analytical framework that includes modeling with social and biophysical data. Most people in the world live in urban areas, and their high population densities, heavy reliance on external sources of food, energy, and water, and disproportionately large waste production result in severe and cumulative negative environmental effects.
8Department of Horticulture, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.7Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.6Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering, University of Texas, Arlington, TX, United States.5Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.4Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.3Department of Geological and Atmospheric Science, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.2Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.1Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States.
Jan Thompson 1*, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian 2, Wei Chen 3, Michael Dorneich 4, Philip Gassman 5, Caroline Krejci 6, Matthew Liebman 7, Ajay Nair 8, Ulrike Passe 9, Nicholas Schwab 11, Kurt Rosentrater 10, Tiffanie Stone 1, Yiming Wang 3 and Yuyu Zhou 3
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