Bridging Science and Policy in Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Using the Q-Nexus Model for Informing Policy Making

Water, energy and food (WEF) systems are highly interconnected and they directly and indirectly affect one another. Science based tools that quantify the direct and indirect interconnections between water, energy and food systems are essential for informing effective WEF policy-making. The Q-Nexus Model is a mathematically-based quantitative WEF nexus assessment tool that serves as platform to quantify, simulate and optimize water, energy and food as interconnected systems of resources. This paper presents a generic scenario-based framework of using Q-Nexus Model for informing about the nexus effects that need to be reflected in the WEF planning and policy-making settings. Firstly, the technical features of the Q-Nexus Model and its capability to evaluate the direct and indirect quantitative effects are introduced. Secondly, the use of the Q-Nexus Model to quantify and simulate numerous key challenges and policy options are then presented. At the practical level, a numerical experiment is presented, and results are discussed. Lastly, the conclusions and further developments are presented.