Integrative technology hubs for urban food-energy-water nexuses and cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs (I): Global trend and technology metrics

• Published in: Critical reviews in environmental science and technology Vol. 51; no. 13; pp. 1397 - 1442
• Main Authors: Chang, Ni-Bin, Hossain, Uzzal, Valencia, Andrea, Qiu, Jiangxiao, Zheng, Qipeng P., Gu, Lixing, Chen, Mengnan, Lu, Jia-Wei, Pires, Ana, Kaandorp, Chelsea, Abraham, Edo, ten Veldhuis, Marie-Claire, van de Giesen, Nick, Molle, Bruno, Tomas, Severine, Ait-Mouheb, Nassim, Dotta, Deborah, Declercq, Rémi, Perrin, Martin, Conradi, Léon, Molle, Geoffrey
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boca Raton Taylor & Francis 2021; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Cost-benefit-risk tradeoff; Engineering Sciences; Food; food-energy-water nexus; Hubs; Indicators; Infrastructure; Integration; Multiagent systems; Optimization; Risk assessment; Sustainability; Technology; technology hubs integration; Tradeoffs; Water resources; technology hubs integration; Cost-benefit-risk tradeoff; food-energy-water nexus
• ISSN: 1064-3389; 1547-6537
• DOI: 10.1080/10643389.2020.1759328

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus for urban sustainability needs to be analyzed via an integrative rather than a sectoral or silo approach, reflecting the ongoing transition from separate infrastructure systems to an integrated social-ecological-infrastructure system. As technology hubs can provide food, energy, water resources via decentralized and/or centralized facilities, there is an acute need to optimize FEW infrastructures by considering cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs with respect to multiple sustainability indicators. This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes global trends with respect to contemporary FEW technology metrics that highlights the possible optimal integration of a broad spectrum of technology hubs for possible cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs. The challenges related to multiscale and multiagent modeling processes for the simulation of urban FEW systems were discussed with respect to the aspects of scaling-up, optimization process, and risk assessment. Our review reveals that this field is growing at a rapid pace and the previous selection of analytical methodologies, nexus criteria, and sustainability indicators largely depended on individual FEW nexus conditions disparately, and full-scale cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs were very rare. Therefore, the potential full-scale technology integration in three ongoing cases of urban FEW systems in Miami (the United States), Marseille (France), and Amsterdam (the Netherlands) were demonstrated in due purpose finally.