Challenges and Opportunities in Modeling and Visualizing Food-Energy-Water Interactions at the Metropolitan Scale

The food, energy, and water (FEW) sectors form an interdependent system of network connections driven by processes that occur at variable spatial and temporal scales. In this talk, we present the challenges and opportunities in modeling, and visualizing, a FEW system in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Maricopa County Arizona, USA. Phoenix Metro imports about ½ of its surface water from the CO River and nearly ½ from local riverine systems; 20 years of drought in the CO River Basin threatens water security for this hot arid desert region. Rapid urban expansion (Maricopa County is one of the fastest growing counties in the country) and a $ 23.3 billion agribusiness industry compete for limited surface water resources. In addition, about ½ of irrigated agriculture (and many of the municipalities) in the county relies on groundwater; agricultural and urban demands continue to overdraft the regional groundwater aquifers. Furthermore, increased energy demands can be attributed to population growth (~80,000 new residents annually) and increased daily minimum ambient air temperatures (~6° C increase since 1948).

We are developing a coupled FEW system that includes an agri-economic model (MPM) and two off-the-shelf programs; WEAP-MABIA and LEAP. The MPM estimates financially suitable planting area for six dominant crops in the region which the MABIA module of WEAP uses to estimate yield and crop water requirements. WEAP estimates the regional water supplies and agricultural demand, and the demand sectors for municipal, industrial, and Indian as well as power plant demand. Estimates of water conveyed, pumped, and treated within WEAP are passed into LEAP which calculates the energy requirements for the network.