(347g) Involving a Systematic Resilience Approach in the Assessment of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Security for Arid Regions

A resilient analysis quantification for the optimal design of an integrated water-energy-food nexus system is presented, which considers the security of the nexus in areas of great economic growth, but that have problems on the availability of their resources due to the climatic conditions.

At present, satisfying the basic resources needs, such as water, energy and food, represents one of the biggest problems around the world [1]; this due to the mismanagement of resources, as well as the losses caused by the climatic events that have been increasing over the years.

The resilience is a new concept that has had relevance recently. In optimization systems, it has been used to improve the performance of processes and to analyze possible failures that may occur and affect the performance of the process. In this way, the process can be underestimated to face possible failures or natural disasters that may arise [2]. The quantification of resilience in optimization systems has brought great benefits, since it allows identifying those scenarios where some failures may occur that lower the performance of the system and thus be able to make decisions about how to approach the problem before, during or after the design of the system.

The addressed problem consists in determining the resilient of the security index in arid and regions that present a lot of variations on their climate conditions, where it seeks to meet the needs of water, energy, and food to improve the sustainable development, reduce hunger and the management and availability of resources. To address this problem, a systematic methodology to assess the resilience in process engineering systems is considered for current states and for future projections [3]. One of the benefits of quantifying resilience in process engineering systems is to identify the cost of repairing a component in the event of a failure, or the cost of losing a functional system. The identification of certain risks allow us to overestimate our system and in this way can adapt it a certain way to avoid the functional loss of any service.

The resilience of different scenarios were analyzed on the current conditions of two important areas in México regarding the security of the water-energy-food nexus, as well as some future projections. There are certain areas in Mexico, in which the availability of these resources is affected by different disturbances, mainly the climatic conditions are one of them. Therefore, carrying out this analysis allows identifying those areas that are most susceptible, as well as at what time of the year and by which weather phenomenon they may be affected at present. In the same way, different future projections were evaluated on the security of the aforementioned nexus; in this way, one can be forewarned about the trend on the availability of resources such as water, energy and food and look for alternatives to improve their sustainability.

References

[1] Deng, HM, Wang, C, Cai, WJ, Liu, Y, Zhang, LX. (2020). Managing the water energy-food nexus in China by adjusting critical final demands and supply chains: An input-output analysis. Science of The Total Environment, 720, 137635.

[2] Moslehi, S, Reddy, TA. (2018). Sustainability of integrated energy systems: A performance-based resilience assessment methodology. Applied Energy, 228, 487-498.

[3] Núñez-López, JM, Rubio-Castro, E, Ponce-Ortega, JM. (2021). Involving resilience in optimizing the water-energy-food nexus at macroscopic level. Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 147, 259-273.