Geographic information systems-based framework for water–energy–food nexus assessments

Abstract

This study introduces a developed Water Energy Food nexus (WEF) framework based on Geographic Information Systems. The objective of the developed framework is to enable stakeholders in Food, Water, and Energy sectors to evaluate resources utilization for sustainable productivity. The framework shows that the interdependence of water and energy requirements can be modeled using public domain data. Three different scenarios were structured using five components: location of the farm and market, irrigation system, crops and area. The scenarios were applied in the study area which is Moghra as a part of the Egyptian national 1.5 million feddan project to investigate the effect of crop type, size and location of the farm on the water and energy consumption. Based on the scenarios' results, the model is a helpful tool for stakeholder to include their data in the model to design their scenarios to get quantitative and spatial information about the WEF.