Towards An Optimal Irrigation Management System from the Water-Food-Energy Nexus Perspective

During the summer 2018, Sweden has experienced an unprecedented drought that has severely affected the agricultural, water and energy sectors. The drought period has highlighted the water-food-energy (WFE) nexus interrelationships and how those can exacerbate during extreme events. Currently, no irrigation management services are provided in Sweden like in countries or zones more prone to drought. This project aims at building a prototype for a WFE nexus irrigation system to reach sustainability goals.The aim of this pre-study is to build a pilot Water-Food-Energy (WFE ) Nexus irrigation management system for Sweden, called SWEDIMS (SWEDish Irrigation Management System), by using the spatially explicit climatic data generated by SMHI. Once operational, the model/interface will provide timely WFE guidelines to farmers, and energy and water agencies.

Specific objectives for this pre-study includes:

1. further develop the model GIS-OptiCE presented in Zhang et al. [1] for Nebraska and in Campana et al. [2] for Sweden;
   
2. further develop the existing model interface to create a demonstrator for a future operational service, primarily for farmers interested in crop growing conditions and irrigation guidelines, but also for agencies related to energy and water management.
   
   

[1] Zhang, J., Campana, P. E., Yao, T., Zhang, Y., Lundblad, A., Melton, F., & Yan, J. (2018). The water-food-energy nexus optimization approach to combat agricultural drought: a case study in the United States. Applied Energy, 227, 449-464.
[2] Campana, P. E., Zhang, J., Yao, T., Andersson, S., Landelius, T., Melton, F., & Yan, J. (2018). Managing agricultural drought in Sweden using a novel spatially-explicit model from the perspective of water-food-energy nexus. Journal of cleaner production, 197, 1382-1393.