A framework for modelling the complexities of food and water security under globalisation

As the world becomes more globalised and more urbanised, our dependence on trade for food and water security increases. Managing food and water security under globalisation is a complex challenge owing to the increased interdependency among regions and sectors. Given the unprecedented pressure on water resources in the 21st century, there is an urgent need for new models to assist in developing water management policies that capture these complexities.

We present a new framework for modelling the complexities of food and water security under globalisation. The framework sets out a method to capture agency, cross-scale socio-environmental feedbacks and interdependency brought about by globalisation and urbanisation. The approach unifies and extends the existing fields of hydrology, Integrated Assessment Modelling and agent-based modelling.

The core of our framework is a multi-agent network of city nodes and infrastructural trade links. This network captures the important role of cities as centres of food and water demand. In addition, it captures the infrastructural networks that constrain our ability to extract water resources from the environment and redistribute them to meet demand.

We believe that this framework can form the basis for a new wave of models that capture cross-scale socioenvironmental feedbacks within our globalised world.