Development of a Comprehensive Water Simulation Model for Water, Food, and Energy Nexus Analysis in Basin Scale

Water, food, and energy (WFE) systems are addressed with their complex interactions with each other. Some models are used to simulate WFE concept, but they cannot consider all nexus complexity. Based on author’s knowledge, there is still a lack of suitable model that can consider relationships inner each WFE sub-systems and between them in nexus concept. The CWSNeX in this study is specifically tailored for a comprehensive water simulation under the WFE nexus system on a basin scale. It benefits from a modular structure and considers the most important interrelations in water sub-system for addressing the gaps and issues in a holistic WFE nexus simulation. CWSNeX is implemented using the Python programming language and can be utilized both within a WFE nexus platform and as a stand-alone tool with time series data. When integrated into a nexus platform, it interacts with the food and energy sub-systems, exchanging information and outputs in each time step. The CWSNeX consists of quantitative and qualitative parts. In the quantitative part, it simulates evaporation, river routing, groundwater, reservoir operation rule, surface water, and groundwater exchange, withdrawal in demand sites, and in the qualitative part, it simulates Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) that is important for irrigation sites. To evaluate the performance of the CWSNeX model, data from the Sufi Chay basin in Iran is used. The goodness of fit criterion (NS, RMSE, R², d-factor and p-factor) showed a good performance of each module.