WP6: The Food, Water and Energy Nexus

Author: Ian McCallum

Description
In the context of the food, water and energy (FWE) nexus, WP6 will contribute to the GEOEssential knowledge base infrastructure with the determination of the required FWE EVs considering the related European policies, SDGs and modelling requirements. The workflow will be established from EVs derived via multiple EV Services (WP3). This will include multiple open data streams (e.g. remote sensing, in-situ, citizen science, social media, telecommunications, socioeconomic and more) obtained preferably via the GEO-DAB (discovery and access broker). One or more case studies will be selected for implementation across Europe, with the results being integrated into a nexus approach. Finally, the information will be transferred to the SDG dashboard (WP7), along with updating of the ConnectinGEO gap analysis and the ENEON (WP2).

Innovations
A variety of innovations are planned for WP6, and include the following:

• • SRI: Ukraine land cover and WOFOST at EU level
  • JFZ: Drought Severity at EU level; and in-situ cal/val on soil moisture
  • Uni Padova:  workflow on accuracy of insitu sensor location, and data compression and machine learning on soil moisture
  • IIASA: workflow based on GLOBIOM outputs (will try to focus on energy workflow)
  • GFZ: workflow based on soil organic matter distribution
  • SWAT: water/nexus related workflow

Progress
To date WP6 has produced a description of the food, water and energy essential variables to be considered in the context of WP6. Furthermore, it has begun the process of developing workflows for testing purposes https://github.com/irmccallum/GeoEssential. Finally, a publication is being created for a special issue reviewing the state of the art in food, water and energy nexus modeling and the linkages with earth observation data, essential variables and the SDGs.