An urban systems framework to assess the trans-boundary food-energy-water nexus: Implementation in Delhi, India. Ramaswami, A., Boyer, D., Nagpure, A., Fang, A., Bogra, S., Bakshi, B., Cohen, E., & Rao-Ghorpade, A. Environmental Research Letters, 2017.
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This paper develops a generalizable systems framework to analyze the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus from an urban systems perspective, connecting in- and trans-boundary interactions, quantifying multiple environmental impacts of community-wide FEW provisioning to cities, and visualizing FEW supply-chain risks posed to cities by the environment. Delhi's community-wide food demand includes household consumption by socio-economic-strata, visitors- and industrial food-use. This demand depends 90%, 76%, and 86% on trans-boundary supply of FEW, respectively. Supply chain data reveal unique features of trans-boundary FEW production regions (e.g. irrigation-electricity needs and GHG intensities of power-plants), yielding supply chain-informed coupled energy-water-GHG footprints of FEW provisioning to Delhi. Agri-food supply contributes to both GHG (19%) and water-footprints (72%-82%) of Delhi's FEW provisioning, with milk, rice and wheat dominating these footprints. Analysis of FEW interactions within Delhi found \textgreater75% in-boundary water-use for food is for urban agriculture and \textgreater76% in-boundary energy-use for food is from cooking fuels. Food waste-to-energy and energy-intensity of commercial and industrial food preparation are key data gaps. Visualizing supply chains shows \textgreater75% of water embodied in Delhi's FEW supply is extracted from locations over-drafting ground water. These baseline data enable evaluation of future urban FEW scenarios, comparing impacts of demand shifts, production shifts, and emerging technologies and policies, within and outside of cities. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.
@article{ramaswami_urban_2017,
	title = {An urban systems framework to assess the trans-boundary food-energy-water nexus: {Implementation} in {Delhi}, {India}},
	volume = {12},
	shorttitle = {An urban systems framework to assess the trans-boundary food-energy-water nexus},
	doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/aa5556},
	abstract = {This paper develops a generalizable systems framework to analyze the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus from an urban systems perspective, connecting in- and trans-boundary interactions, quantifying multiple environmental impacts of community-wide FEW provisioning to cities, and visualizing FEW supply-chain risks posed to cities by the environment. Delhi's community-wide food demand includes household consumption by socio-economic-strata, visitors- and industrial food-use. This demand depends 90\%, 76\%, and 86\% on trans-boundary supply of FEW, respectively. Supply chain data reveal unique features of trans-boundary FEW production regions (e.g. irrigation-electricity needs and GHG intensities of power-plants), yielding supply chain-informed coupled energy-water-GHG footprints of FEW provisioning to Delhi. Agri-food supply contributes to both GHG (19\%) and water-footprints (72\%-82\%) of Delhi's FEW provisioning, with milk, rice and wheat dominating these footprints. Analysis of FEW interactions within Delhi found {\textgreater}75\% in-boundary water-use for food is for urban agriculture and {\textgreater}76\% in-boundary energy-use for food is from cooking fuels. Food waste-to-energy and energy-intensity of commercial and industrial food preparation are key data gaps. Visualizing supply chains shows {\textgreater}75\% of water embodied in Delhi's FEW supply is extracted from locations over-drafting ground water. These baseline data enable evaluation of future urban FEW scenarios, comparing impacts of demand shifts, production shifts, and emerging technologies and policies, within and outside of cities. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.},
	number = {2},
	journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
	author = {Ramaswami, A. and Boyer, D. and Nagpure, A.S. and Fang, A. and Bogra, S. and Bakshi, B. and Cohen, E. and Rao-Ghorpade, A.},
	year = {2017},
	keywords = {Sustainability, coupled water-energy-GHG footprints, food energy water nexus, risk, ground water vulnerability, supply-chain, trans-boundary infrastructure footprints, urban system}
}

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