Decision Support Tool for Building Climate-Resilient Food-Water-Energy-Ecosystems Nexus under Uncertainty

The food-water-energy-ecosystems/FWEE nexus interact in complex non-linear ways, with cascading, far-reaching society repercussions & significant science-policy-practice challenges. Climate extremes, e.g., floods/droughts/heatwaves, exacerbate these issues, disrupting systems’ equilibrium that can destabilise agricultural production, compromise water availability, reduce energy generation capacity, and damage vital ecosystems worldwide. These shocks also amplify feedback loops, with cascading risks & nexus trade-offs/conflicts; understanding of this is vital for achieving the SDGs. Past studies highlighted that uncertainty in climate projections & socio-economic dynamics perils long-term FWEE nexus planning. Siloed/sector-based climate policies & nexus management practices further complicate these challenges, limiting the ability to develop robust nexus adaptation strategies, and undermining sustainable development efforts and exacerbating poverty levels. Current models often fail to adequately integrate the multi-sectoral dependencies, feedback loops, and deep uncertainty inherent in the FWEE nexus. This project aims to develop a Decision Support Tool combining integrated scenario-based modelling of multi-hazard and cascading risks and optimisation of real-adaptation-options to enhance FWEE systems’ efficiency and climate resilience, by leveraging open-source data, big-spatiotemporal-data analytics/modelling/visualisation, and emerging digital technologies, like AI/DL/ML.