A Gridded Water-Food-Energy Nexus Management System for Sweden

The concept of water-food-energy (WFE) nexus gained popularity after the World Economic Forum in 2008 to highlight the interrelations between the water, food and energy systems due to various global crises regarding food security in 2008. Since then, several WFE nexus models have been developed and applied to case studies with different space and temporal scales. Recent reviews of available WFE nexus tools showed that the major limitation of the existing tools is the lack of synergy between the nexus areas and very few models are at the stage of implementing the WFE nexus approach.

The aim of this pre-study is to build a pilot but comprehensive WFE tool for Sweden that builds on SWEDIMS (SWEDish Irrigation Management System External link.), by using the spatially explicit climatic data generated by SMHI.

Specific objectives for this feasibility study include:

1. create a dataset to estimate water, energy and food consumption on a national scale using network data;
   
2. further develop the GIS-OptiCE model by including not only the irrigation sector but comprehensive agriculture (ie crops and livestock), housing, commercial and industrial sectors to solve water and energy problems;
   
3. further develop the existing model interface to have full control over the time series analysis.