Quantifying the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Current Status and Trends
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School of Management Science and Engineering, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China
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McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
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State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
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School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Mark Lemon
Energies 2016, 9(2), 65; https://doi.org/10.3390/en9020065
Received: 24 September 2015 / Revised: 5 January 2016 / Accepted: 14 January 2016 / Published: 22 January 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Energy and Sustainable Development)
Water, energy, and food are lifelines for modern societies. The continuously rising world population, growing desires for higher living standards, and inextricable links among the three sectors make the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus a vibrant research pursuit. For the integrated delivery of WEF systems, quantifying WEF connections helps understand synergies and trade-offs across the water, energy, and food sectors, and thus is a critical initial step toward integrated WEF nexus modeling and management. However, current WEF interconnection quantifications encounter methodological hurdles. Also, existing calculation results are scattered across a wide collection of studies in multiple disciplines, which increases data collection and interpretation difficulties. To advance robust WEF nexus quantifications and further contribute to integrated WEF systems modeling and management, this study: (i) summarizes the estimate results to date on WEF interconnections; (ii) analyzes methodological and practical challenges associated with WEF interconnection calculations; and (iii) points out opportunities for enabling robust WEF nexus quantifications in the future.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Chang, Y.; Li, G.; Yao, Y.; Zhang, L.; Yu, C. Quantifying the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Current Status and Trends. Energies 2016, 9, 65.
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