Utilizing Multi-Sectoral Modeling to Anticipate Environmental Security Concerns Relevant to National Security Missions

Capturing the dynamics of multiscale interactions among climate, energy, water, land, socioeconomics, and infrastructure are critical to understanding and predicting future vulnerabilities and the resilience of coupled human and earth systems. Interdependencies between these sectors can be a destabilizing forces on societies and anticipating the consequences of changing global dynamics requires an integrated modeling approach. The value of these models is they capture the global dynamics and continually provide a platform to begin understanding regional and site scale consequences. For example, the consequences of continuously changing weather and climate throughout the remainder of the century could trigger feedback effects that could amplify disruptive change for economies and ecosystems critical for food and water security. These changes will manifest as winners and losers, both relative and absolute, and will also contribute to changes to the balance of power and the stability of nations and cultures. Anticipating future conditions critical to the sustainment of agricultural systems was explored using the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). This model allows analysts to explore the interdependencies between water, policy programs, and energy systems under future climate conditions. Two national security case studies will be presented: 1) impacts of climate on food security and 2) impact of climate on hydropower efficiency and impacts to national security. Policy responses to these stresses will directly affect the shape of global energy and food production and trade. Modeling scenarios provide opportunities to identify critical dependencies and provide policy makers opportunities to explore various policy implications on integrated food, water, and energy systems.