@article {4407, title = {Water-food-energy nexus for transboundary cooperation in Eastern Africa}, journal = {Water Supply}, year = {2022}, month = {Mar-01-2022}, abstract = {Establishing cooperation in transboundary rivers is challenging especially with the weak or non-existent river basin institutions. A nexus-based approach is developed to explore cooperation opportunities in transboundary river basins while considering system operation and coordination under uncertain hydrologic river regimes. The proposed approach is applied to the Nile river basin with a special focus on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), assuming two possible governance positions: with or without cooperation. A cooperation mechanism is developed to allocate additional releases from the GERD when necessary, while a unilateral position assumes that the GERD is operated to maximize hydropower generation regardless of downstream users{\textquoteright} needs. The GERD operation modes were analysed considering operation of downstream reservoirs and varying demands in Egypt. Results show that average basin-wide hydropower generation is likely to increase by about 547 GWh/year (1\%) if cooperation is adopted when compared to the unilateral position. In Sudan, hydropower generation and water supply are expected to enhance in the unilateral position and would improve further with cooperation. Furthermore, elevated low flows by the GERD are likely to improve the WFE nexus outcomes in Egypt under full cooperation governance scenario with a small reduction in GERD hydropower generation (2,000 GWh/year (19\%)). }, issn = {1606-9749}, doi = {10.2166/ws.2022.001}, url = {https://iwaponline.com/ws/article/doi/10.2166/ws.2022.001/86211/Water-food-energy-nexus-for-transboundary}, author = {Elsayed, Hamdy and Djordjevi{\'c}, Slobodan and Savic, Dragan and Tsoukalas, Ioannis and Makropoulos, Christos} } @article {4394, title = {The Nile Water-Food-Energy Nexus under Uncertainty: Impacts of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam}, journal = {Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management}, volume = {146}, year = {2020}, month = {Jan-11-2020}, pages = {04020085}, abstract = {

Achieving a water, food, and energy (WFE) nexus balance through policy interventions is challenging in a transboundary river basin because of the dynamic nature and intersectoral complexity that may cross borders. The Nile basin is shared by a number of riparian countries and is currently experiencing rapid population and economic growth. This has sparked new developments to meet the growing water, food, and energy demands, alleviate poverty, and improve the livelihood in the basin. Such developments could result in basinwide cooperation or trigger conflicts among the riparian countries. A system dynamics model was developed for the entire Nile basin and integrated with the food and energy sectors in Egypt to investigate the future of the WFE nexus with and without the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) during filling and subsequent operation using basinwide stochastically generated flows. Different filling rates from 10\% to 100\% of the average monthly flow are considered during the filling process. Results suggest that the GERD filling and operation would affect the WFE nexus in Egypt, with the impact likely to be significant if the filling process occurred during a dry period. Food production from irrigated agriculture would be reduced by 9\%\–19\% during filling and by about 4\% during GERD operation compared with the case without it. The irrigation water supply and hydropower generation in Sudan will be reduced during the filling phase of the GERD, but this is expected to be improved during the dam operation phase as a result of the regulation afforded by the GERD. Ethiopian hydropower generation is expected to be boosted by the GERD during the filling and operation of the dam, adding an average of 15,000\ \ GWh/year15,000\ \ GWh/year once GERD comes online. Lastly, the results reveal the urgency of cooperation and coordination among the riparian countries to minimize the regional risks and maximize the regional rewards associated with the GERD.

}, issn = {0733-9496}, doi = {10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0001285}, url = {http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/\%28ASCE\%29WR.1943-5452.0001285http://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/\%28ASCE\%29WR.1943-5452.0001285}, author = {Elsayed, Hamdy and Djordjevi{\'c}, Slobodan and Savi{\'c}, Dragan A. and Tsoukalas, Ioannis and Makropoulos, Christos} } @article {4400, title = {An integrated model to evaluate water-energy-food nexus at a household scale}, journal = {Environmental Modelling \& Software}, volume = {93}, year = {2017}, month = {Jan-07-2017}, pages = {366 - 380}, abstract = {

To achieve a sustainable supply and effectively manage water, energy and food (WEF) demand, interactions between WEF need to be understood. This study developed an integrated model, capturing the interactions between WEF at end-use level at a household scale. The model is based on a survey of 419 households conducted to investigate WEF over winter and summer for the city of Duhok, Iraq. A bottom-up approach was used to develop this system dynamics-based model. The model estimates WEF demand and the generated organic waste and wastewater quantities. It also investigates the impact of change in user behaviour, diet, income, family size and climate.

The simulation results show a good agreement with the historical data. Using the model, the impact of Global Scenario Group (GSG) scenarios was investigated. The results suggest that the \‘fortress world\’ scenario (an authoritarian response to the threat of breakdown) had the highest impact on WEF.

}, issn = {13648152}, doi = {10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.03.034}, url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1364815216306594https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S1364815216306594?httpAccept=text/xmlhttps://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S1364815216306594?httpAccept=text/plain}, author = {Hussien, Wa{\textquoteright}el A. and Memon, Fayyaz A. and Savi{\'c}, Dragan A.} } @article {4356, title = {Intermediate tree cover can maximize groundwater recharge in the seasonally dry tropics}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, volume = {6}, year = {2016}, month = {Jan-04-2016}, doi = {10.1038/srep21930}, url = {http://www.nature.com/articles/srep21930http://www.nature.com/articles/srep21930.pdfhttp://www.nature.com/articles/srep21930.pdfhttp://www.nature.com/articles/srep21930}, author = {Ilstedt, U. and Bargu?s Tobella, A. and Bazi?, H. R. and Bayala, J. and Verbeeten, E. and Nyberg, G. and Sanou, J. and Benegas, L. and Murdiyarso, D. and Laudon, H. and Sheil, D. and Malmer, A.} } @article {4262, title = {Multiscale digital Arabidopsis predicts individual organ and whole-organism growth}, journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Understanding how dynamic molecular networks affect whole-organism physiology, analogous to mapping genotype to phenotype, remains a key challenge in biology. Quantitative models that represent processes at multiple scales and link understanding from several research domains can help to tackle this problem. Such integrated models are more common in crop science and ecophysiology than in the research communities that elucidate molecular networks. Several laboratories have modeled particular aspects of growth in Arabidopsis thaliana, but it was unclear whether these existing models could productively be combined. We test this approach by constructing a multiscale model of Arabidopsis rosette growth. Four existing models were integrated with minimal parameter modification (leaf water content and one flowering parameter used measured data). The resulting framework model links genetic regulation and biochemical dynamics to events at the organ and whole-plant levels, helping to understand the combined effects of endogenous and environmental regulators on Arabidopsis growth. The framework model was validated and tested with metabolic, physiological, and biomass data from two laboratories, for five photoperiods, three accessions, and a transgenic line, highlighting the plasticity of plant growth strategies. The model was extended to include stochastic development. Model simulations gave insight into the developmental control of leaf production and provided a quantitative explanation for the pleiotropic developmental phenotype caused by overexpression of miR156, which was an open question. Modular, multiscale models, assembling knowledge from systems biology to ecophysiology, will help to understand and to engineer plant behavior from the genome to the field.}, issn = {1091-6490}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.1410238111}, url = {http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/08/27/1410238111.full.pdf+html?sid=66edb45d-8e99-4d84-a072-a47729a65e14}, author = {Chew, Y. H. and Wenden, B. and Flis, A. and Mengin, V. and Taylor, J. and Davey, C. L. and Tindal, C. and Thomas, H. and Ougham, H. J. and de Reffye, P. and Stitt, M. and Williams, M. and Muetzelfeldt, R. and Halliday, K. J. and Millar, A. J.} } @article {1557, title = {Modeling the soil system: Bridging the gap between pedology and soil{\textendash}water physics}, journal = {Global and Planetary Change}, volume = {67}, year = {2009}, month = {05/2009}, pages = {51-61}, publisher = {Elsevier B.V}, abstract = {

The biological and geochemical processes in soil such as organic matter mineralization, microbiological activity, and plant alimentation can be accurately assessed and modeled only with the knowledge of the thermodynamic status of the soil medium where these processes take place. However, current soil water models do not define and characterize the soil structure or the thermodynamic state of the soil water interacting with this structure. This article presents a new paradigm in characterizing and\ previous termmodelingnext term\ the organized soil medium and the physical properties resulting from this organization. It describes a framework of the\ previous termmodelingnext term\ approach as a contribution to the General Systems theory. The basic concept of Representative Elementary Volume (REV) in soil physics and hydrology was transformed into the concept of Structure Representative Volume (SREV) which takes into account the hierarchical organization of the structured soil medium. The pedostructure is defined as the SREV of the soil medium and this concept is at the basis of the new paradigm including variables, equations, parameters, and units in soil physics, in a similar way that the REV is at the basis of the continuous porous media mechanics applied to soils. The paradigm allows for a thermodynamic characterization of the structured soil medium with respect to soil water content then bridging the gap between pedology and soil physics. We show that the two points of view (REV and SREV) are complementary and must be used in the scaling of information. This approach leads to a new dimension in soil\–water properties characterization that ensures a physically based\ previous termmodelingnext term\ of processes in soil and the transfer of information from the physical scale of processes (pedostructure or laboratory measurements scale) to the application scale of the other disciplines (previous termmodelingnext term\ and mapping scale).

}, doi = {10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.12.002 }, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.12.002 }, author = {Erik Braudeaua and Rabi H. Mohtar} } @article {1558, title = {A multi-scale {\textquoteright}{\textquoteright}soil water structure{\textquoteright}{\textquoteright} model based on the pedostructure concept}, journal = {Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.}, volume = {6}, year = {2009}, pages = {1111-1163}, abstract = {

Current soil water models do not take into account the internal organization of the soil medium and, a fortiori, the physical interaction between the water film surrounding the solid particles of the soil structure, and the surface charges of this structure. In that sense they empirically deal with the physical soil properties that are all generated from this soil water-structure interaction. As a result, the thermodynamic state of the soil water medium, which constitutes the local physical conditions, namely the pedo-climate, for biological and geo-chemical processes in soil, is not defined in these models. The omission of soil structure from soil characterization and modeling does not allow for coupling disciplinary models for these processes with soil water models. This article presents a soil water structure model, Kamel, which was developed based on a new paradigm in soil physics where the hierarchical soil structure is taken into account allowing for defining its thermodynamic properties. After a review of soil physics principles which forms the basis of the paradigm, we describe the basic relationships and functionality of the model. Kamel\ runs with a set of 15 soil input parameters, the pedohydral parameters, which are parameters of the physically-based equations of four soil characteristic curves that can be measured in the laboratory. For cases where some of these parameters are not available, we show how to estimate these parameters from commonly available soil information using published pedotransfer functions. A published field experimental study on the dynamics of the soil moisture profile following a pounded infiltration rainfall event was used as an example to demonstrate soil characterization and Kamel\ simulations. The simulated soil moisture profile for a period of 60 days showed very good agreement with experimental field data. Simulations using input data calculated from soil texture and pedotransfer functions were also generated and compared to simulations of the more ideal characterization. The later comparison illustrates how Kamel\ can be used and adapt to any case of soil data availability. As physically based model on soil structure, it may be used as a standard reference to evaluate other soil-water models and also pedotransfer functions at a given location or agronomical situation.

}, url = {http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/6/1111/2009/}, author = {Braudeau, E. , Mohtar, R. H. , El Ghezal, N. , Crayol, M. , Salahat, M. , and Martin, P} } @proceedings {1560, title = {CONCEPT MAPS FOR COMBINING HARD AND SOFT SYSTEM THINKING IN THE MANAGEMENT OF SOCIO-ECOSYSTEMS}, year = {2008}, url = {http://cmc.ihmc.us/cmc2008papers/cmc2008-p190.pdf}, author = {Franco Salerno and Emanuele Cuccillato and Robert Muetzelfeldt and Francesco Giannino and Birendra Bajracharya and Paolo Caroli and Gaetano Viviano and Anna Staiano and Fabrizio Carten{\`\i}, and Stefano Mazzoleni and Gianni Tartari} } @article {4214, title = {The clinical and cost effectiveness of screening for meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)}, year = {2007}, issn = {HTA 9}, url = {http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/his/idoc.ashx?docid=4cd58ffa-afdb-45bb-b0d5-22782b3f327d\&version=-1}, author = {Ritchie K and Bradbury I and Craig J and Eastgate J and Foster L and Kohli H and Iqbal K and MacPherson K and McCarthy T and McIntosh H and Nic Lochlainn E and Reid M and Taylor J} } @book {1594, title = {Environmental Modelling: Finding Simplicity in Complexity}, year = {2003}, pages = {430}, publisher = {Wiley}, organization = {Wiley}, keywords = {environmental modelling, GIS}, isbn = {978-0471496182}, url = {http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471496189.html}, author = {John Wainwright and Mark Mulligan} } @article {1543, title = {The Simile visual modelling environment.}, journal = {European Journal of Agronomy}, volume = {18}, year = {2003}, pages = {345-358 }, abstract = {

Simile is a visual modelling environment that has been developed to overcome the problems involved in implementing agro-ecological simulation models using conventional programming languages: problems such as the effort and skill needed to program the models, the lack of transparency in models implemented as programs, and the lack of reuseability of models and submodels. It combines the familiar System Dynamics (compartment-flow) paradigm with an object-based paradigm, allowing many forms of disaggregation to be handled, as well as spatial modelling and individual-based modelling. Its visual modelling interface makes it accessible to non-programmers, at the same time allowing models to be largely self-documenting. Models can be run very efficiently as compiled C++ programs, and users can develop new visualisation tools for displaying model results. Simile has been used in international research programmes, including the modelling of Mediterranean vegetation dynamics and modelling the interaction between households and land at the forest margin in developing countries. Simile has been developed in a spirit of open standards for model sharing. Models are saved as a text file in a structured format, with a view to enable model sharing with other modelling environments and to encourage others to develop additional tools for working with models.

}, keywords = {Declarative modelling, Modelling, Modelling environment, Simile}, url = {http://www.simulistics.com/files/documents/SimilePaper.pdf}, author = {Muetzelfeldt, R. I and Massheder, J.} }