A water-energy-food security nexus framework based on optimal resource allocation

Urbanization, increasing demands, and climate change are critical challenges to ensure water, energy, and food security. The water-energy-food nexus requires integrating tools to guide the allocation of resources and promote sustainability. This work presents a mathematical formulation for the optimal design and management of resources to enhance the water-energy-food nexus security. Resource security is measured through indicators related to the availability, access, and sufficiency of water, energy, and food. Furthermore, the problem was analyzed under different allocation schemes (social welfare, Rawlsian, Nash, and Rawlsian-Nash) to maximize the global resource security (including water, energy, and food) and obtain the optimal design of the system. Therefore, the water, energy, and food security indices are considered as the objectives of interest. To show the applicability of the model, a Mexican state evaluated by regions was selected as a case study. Results show that through this approach, the security of the water, energy, and food sectors could be increased 6%, 56%, and 26%, respectively, and 27% the security of the water-energy-food nexus using the social welfare scheme in the addressed case study. The proposed water-energy-food nexus framework can be applied to any region with the corresponding data.