The water, food, energy and environment (WFEE) Nexus has recently gained attention from researche... more The water, food, energy and environment (WFEE) Nexus has recently gained attention from researchers and policymakers. This paper reviews the WFEE Nexus articles. Google Scholar search engine was used for the survey. By examining the articles, we found that 48 articles focused on this approach. Our systematic review found that existing nexus tools rarely used social science methods and failed to apply replicable methods. Our review indicates that The environment was considered in the nexus after 2017. The term “Environment” was only mentioned in 14% of these articles (Fig.1). In articles, we found close synonyms to “Environment,” such as “Earth”; “Ecosystem,” but also the term “Climate.” WFEE approach survey the interdependencies between water demand sectors and social, economic and environmental changes in water resource and demand management. WFEE is a water-centred approach. Based on the (Zhang et al., 2019) study, it is necessary to strengthen the interaction between resources management in different sectors in a structured way. Otherwise, actions in one system of resources will affect another system of resources. Hence, the value of WFEE for coproducing adaptation scenarios (Momblanch et al., 2019). Applying the nexus is complex as it needs many inputs and tools for capturing nexus interactions (Albrecht et al., 2018a; Kaddoura and el Khatib, 2017). In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to use methods from various disciplines (Albrecht et al., 2018a), depending on the analysis's aim, scope, and scale. An integrated systems perspective is enhanced by a multidisciplinary approach(Al-Saidi and Elagib, 2017; Khan et al., 2018), which facilitates sector-specific decision-making and planning. The WFEE has been analyzed using a wide range of modelling tools. There are some tools, such as WEAP (Sieber, 2006) and OSeMOSYS (Akute and Cannone, 2022), that follow a silo-based approach in which only one element of nexus is considered (Albrecht et al., 2018b; Leck et al., 2015; Smajgl et al., 2016). while other integrative application like MuSIASEM [44] combines the three modules, food, energy and Water (Fig.2). A significant gap is the lack of attention to the dynamic concept and the interaction between the components. To assess the effects of climate change, most studies combined various hydrological models, such as hydro-economic models,HEM (Bekchanov et al.,2019), WAEP, LHMs (Monteagudo et al., 2022), with IPCC scenarios. However, downscaling IPCC scenario output with different models is a relatively confident technique for climate data and water resources at the basin level (Yoosefdoost et al., 2022), incorporating this downscale output into the environment models are challenging. It is a big limitation to assess one section of the environment without considering the impact of the other parts. The environment is a complex system with all its parts interconnected. Moreover, since several factors affect the environment, using downscaled data on the environment reduces the reliability of the results. To address these issues, the article (Correa-Cano et al., 2022) proposes a conceptual structure for the WEFE modelling package, a system dynamic model combining hydraulic, environmental, and economic models(Fig.3).Keywords: WFEE, weaknesses
Oman is a country under severe water stress. Currently Oman produces around 1 Mm3/day of desalina... more Oman is a country under severe water stress. Currently Oman produces around 1 Mm3/day of desalinated seawater for urban purposes to expand supply. This policy was partially imposed by the irregularity of rain and the concentration of the population on the coastal areas. Most of the conventional water resources are in the form of groundwater and are used in the agricultural sector. Abstractions from wells are subject to licenses. But licenses so far do not carry any limits. The result is a race for water with overabstractions in the coastal areas causing seawater intrusion and damage to the aquifers. The government is planning to introduce progressively water quotas to farmers and monitoring through smart meters and online system. Large volumes of tertiary treated wastewater are produced daily and are only partially reused for landscaping. There is a mismatch between the willingness of farmers to pay for treated wastewater and the price set by the public authority leading to a limited demand. The actual context of free and unlimited access to groundwater does not encourage to shift the demand toward high-quality treated wastewater. Plans are being considered for recharging some of the aquifers with the treated wastewater. Irrigation efficiency improvements have been observed mainly for vegetable producers where the adoption of irrigation technology resulted in higher revenues and lower labor costs. Urban water prices are at 1/3 of their costs discouraging water saving and adoption of water saving/recycling devices at homes or industries. Urban water security is being addressed by aquifer storage and recovery techniques using excess winter desalinated water.
This chapter summarizes the most important water policies implemented in the seven countries cons... more This chapter summarizes the most important water policies implemented in the seven countries considered in the book. It also assesses the progress made by each of the countries on the reforms judged fundamental to avoid water crises and social unrests and ensure water security for a sustainable development. The chapter concludes with a comparison of reforms undertaken worldwide and suggests some urgent measures that would speed up balancing supply and demand. Essentially demand management and cost recovery are judged urgent to undertake and feasible by learning from the successful energy price reforms undertaken in Iran and Oman for instance.
The Middle East and North Africa region is experiencing a widening gap between freshwater supply ... more The Middle East and North Africa region is experiencing a widening gap between freshwater supply and demand caused by population and economic growth and climate change. This book addresses water scarcity issues in the MENA region and gives an overview of the current water policies in seven MENA countries: Algeria, Egypt Iran, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia. This book includes an introductory chapter and seven chapters showcasing water policies in each country. This introductory chapter gives a quantitative representation and description of current available water resources; water demand for industrial, domestic, and agricultural purposes; and water per capita decline over time. The seven chapters provide details on the main challenges faced in each of the countries in the water sector. The chapters address the laws governing water use in the three economic sectors, water supply, water pricing and cost recovery and irrigation efficiency, and technology adoption. The increase of supply from non-conventional resources such as desalination and reuse of treated wastewater is analyzed. The chapters end up discussing how the countries are adapting to climate change and the role of research and innovations.
In this paper, we develop a two-stage analytical framework to investigate farming efficiency. In ... more In this paper, we develop a two-stage analytical framework to investigate farming efficiency. In the first stage, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed to estimate the efficiency of the farms and conduct slack and scale economies analyses. In the second stage, we propose a stochastic model to identify potential sources of inefficiency. The later model integrates within a unified structure all variables, including inputs, outputs and contextual factors. As an application ground, we use a sample of 60 farms from the Batinah coastal region, an agricultural area representing more than 53% of the total cropped area of Oman. The findings of the study lay emphasis on the interdependence of groundwater salinity, irrigation technology and farm’s operational efficiency, with as a key recommendation the necessity for more regulated water consumption and a readjustment of the government’s subsidiary policies.
An increase in groundwater storage in aquifers in arid areas improves water security. Most desali... more An increase in groundwater storage in aquifers in arid areas improves water security. Most desalination water production around the globe involves the private sector in the form of “build, operate, and transfer” or “build, operate, and own” agreements. Take-or-pay contracts are the most dominant contracts in the desalination industry. The water utility buys a fixed volume of water from the desalination company over a fixed period of 20 to 25 years. The contract between the two parties is established prior to building the plant to help ensure a profitable investment for all stakeholders. This regularly implies a surplus supply of desalinated water during low water demand periods. Given the absolute water scarcity in arid regions, maximizing the banking of surplus water in an aquifer is considered in this paper. For this purpose, a numerical groundwater flow simulation model, called MODFLOW, and a heuristic multiobjective optimizer, namely, NSGA-II, are coupled to optimize the injection and recovery of seasonal excess desalinated seawater in an alluvium coastal aquifer in Oman. Dual wells are considered for injection and abstraction of the water. The optimal daily abstraction and injection rates are determined by defining a multiobjective optimization framework. The four objective functions considered in this study are maximizing the total volume of desalinated water recharged into the aquifer; minimizing the groundwater losses to the sea; minimizing seawater intrusion by minimizing the maximum seasonal mean drawdown; and maximizing the total benefit from the recharge and recovery of the desalinated water. Analysis of the results revealed that we would be able to use 84% of the excess produced desalinated water (i.e., 8.4 of the 10 Mm 3 /year) that is currently returned to the sea. The net benefit from storage and recovery ranged between $14.77 million/year and $17.80 million/year. The increasing number of desalination plants at the global level calls for an integrated approach to bank the excess desalinated water and to improve the water security of coastal cities in arid and semiarid regions.
A mathematical model involving inverse optimization theory and data envelopment analysis (DEA) as... more A mathematical model involving inverse optimization theory and data envelopment analysis (DEA) as an eciency measurement tool has recently been developed to handle the reallocation of resources in the context of Mergers & Acquisitions (Gattou et al. [8]). This paper highlights the practical importance of these concepts through an application in the farming sector, using a sample of 45 farms from the Batinah region, in the sultanate of Oman. Through a random selection of potential merging farms, the proposed InvDEA method is shown to enable not only reallocating resources but also reversing the merger’s decision if the contribution of one of the merging entities is found to be poor. In order to gauge the practical importance of the InvDEA model, its application scope can be expanded to other sectors, like banking, insurance, education, healthcare, etc.
Arid countries, such as the Sultanate of Oman, are facing challenges of water shortages threateni... more Arid countries, such as the Sultanate of Oman, are facing challenges of water shortages threatening economic development and social stability. Most of those countries are vulnerable to the potential adverse impacts of climate change, the most significant of which are increased average temperatures, less and more erratic precipitation, sea level rise, and desertification. The combined effect of existing adverse conditions and likely impacts of future climate change will make water management even more difficult than what it is today. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to augment the water resources.
Combined simulation–optimization (CSO) schemes are common in the literature to solve different gr... more Combined simulation–optimization (CSO) schemes are common in the literature to solve different groundwater management problems, and CSO is particularly well-established in the coastal aquifer management literature. However, with a few exceptions, nearly all previous studies have employed the CSO approach to derive static groundwater management plans that remain unchanged during the entire management period, consequently overlooking the possible positive impacts of dynamic strategies. Dynamic strategies involve division of the planning time interval into several subintervals or periods, and adoption of revised decisions during each period based on the most recent knowledge of the groundwater system and its associated uncertainties. Problem structuring and computational challenges seem to be the main factors preventing the widespread implementation of dynamic strategies in groundwater applications. The objective of this study is to address these challenges by introducing a novel probabilistic Multiperiod CSO approach for dynamic groundwater management. This includes reformulation of the groundwater management problem so that it can be adapted to the multiperiod CSO approach, and subsequent employment of polynomial chaos expansion-based stochastic dynamic programming to obtain optimal dynamic strategies. The proposed approach is employed to provide sustainable solutions for a coastal aquifer storage and recovery facility in Oman, considering the effect of natural recharge uncertainty. It is revealed that the proposed dynamic approach results in an improved performance by taking advantage of system variations, allowing for increased groundwater abstraction, injection and hence monetary benefit compared to the commonly used static optimization approach.
The water, food, energy and environment (WFEE) Nexus has recently gained attention from researche... more The water, food, energy and environment (WFEE) Nexus has recently gained attention from researchers and policymakers. This paper reviews the WFEE Nexus articles. Google Scholar search engine was used for the survey. By examining the articles, we found that 48 articles focused on this approach. Our systematic review found that existing nexus tools rarely used social science methods and failed to apply replicable methods. Our review indicates that The environment was considered in the nexus after 2017. The term “Environment” was only mentioned in 14% of these articles (Fig.1). In articles, we found close synonyms to “Environment,” such as “Earth”; “Ecosystem,” but also the term “Climate.” WFEE approach survey the interdependencies between water demand sectors and social, economic and environmental changes in water resource and demand management. WFEE is a water-centred approach. Based on the (Zhang et al., 2019) study, it is necessary to strengthen the interaction between resources management in different sectors in a structured way. Otherwise, actions in one system of resources will affect another system of resources. Hence, the value of WFEE for coproducing adaptation scenarios (Momblanch et al., 2019). Applying the nexus is complex as it needs many inputs and tools for capturing nexus interactions (Albrecht et al., 2018a; Kaddoura and el Khatib, 2017). In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to use methods from various disciplines (Albrecht et al., 2018a), depending on the analysis's aim, scope, and scale. An integrated systems perspective is enhanced by a multidisciplinary approach(Al-Saidi and Elagib, 2017; Khan et al., 2018), which facilitates sector-specific decision-making and planning. The WFEE has been analyzed using a wide range of modelling tools. There are some tools, such as WEAP (Sieber, 2006) and OSeMOSYS (Akute and Cannone, 2022), that follow a silo-based approach in which only one element of nexus is considered (Albrecht et al., 2018b; Leck et al., 2015; Smajgl et al., 2016). while other integrative application like MuSIASEM [44] combines the three modules, food, energy and Water (Fig.2). A significant gap is the lack of attention to the dynamic concept and the interaction between the components. To assess the effects of climate change, most studies combined various hydrological models, such as hydro-economic models,HEM (Bekchanov et al.,2019), WAEP, LHMs (Monteagudo et al., 2022), with IPCC scenarios. However, downscaling IPCC scenario output with different models is a relatively confident technique for climate data and water resources at the basin level (Yoosefdoost et al., 2022), incorporating this downscale output into the environment models are challenging. It is a big limitation to assess one section of the environment without considering the impact of the other parts. The environment is a complex system with all its parts interconnected. Moreover, since several factors affect the environment, using downscaled data on the environment reduces the reliability of the results. To address these issues, the article (Correa-Cano et al., 2022) proposes a conceptual structure for the WEFE modelling package, a system dynamic model combining hydraulic, environmental, and economic models(Fig.3).Keywords: WFEE, weaknesses
Oman is a country under severe water stress. Currently Oman produces around 1 Mm3/day of desalina... more Oman is a country under severe water stress. Currently Oman produces around 1 Mm3/day of desalinated seawater for urban purposes to expand supply. This policy was partially imposed by the irregularity of rain and the concentration of the population on the coastal areas. Most of the conventional water resources are in the form of groundwater and are used in the agricultural sector. Abstractions from wells are subject to licenses. But licenses so far do not carry any limits. The result is a race for water with overabstractions in the coastal areas causing seawater intrusion and damage to the aquifers. The government is planning to introduce progressively water quotas to farmers and monitoring through smart meters and online system. Large volumes of tertiary treated wastewater are produced daily and are only partially reused for landscaping. There is a mismatch between the willingness of farmers to pay for treated wastewater and the price set by the public authority leading to a limited demand. The actual context of free and unlimited access to groundwater does not encourage to shift the demand toward high-quality treated wastewater. Plans are being considered for recharging some of the aquifers with the treated wastewater. Irrigation efficiency improvements have been observed mainly for vegetable producers where the adoption of irrigation technology resulted in higher revenues and lower labor costs. Urban water prices are at 1/3 of their costs discouraging water saving and adoption of water saving/recycling devices at homes or industries. Urban water security is being addressed by aquifer storage and recovery techniques using excess winter desalinated water.
This chapter summarizes the most important water policies implemented in the seven countries cons... more This chapter summarizes the most important water policies implemented in the seven countries considered in the book. It also assesses the progress made by each of the countries on the reforms judged fundamental to avoid water crises and social unrests and ensure water security for a sustainable development. The chapter concludes with a comparison of reforms undertaken worldwide and suggests some urgent measures that would speed up balancing supply and demand. Essentially demand management and cost recovery are judged urgent to undertake and feasible by learning from the successful energy price reforms undertaken in Iran and Oman for instance.
The Middle East and North Africa region is experiencing a widening gap between freshwater supply ... more The Middle East and North Africa region is experiencing a widening gap between freshwater supply and demand caused by population and economic growth and climate change. This book addresses water scarcity issues in the MENA region and gives an overview of the current water policies in seven MENA countries: Algeria, Egypt Iran, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia. This book includes an introductory chapter and seven chapters showcasing water policies in each country. This introductory chapter gives a quantitative representation and description of current available water resources; water demand for industrial, domestic, and agricultural purposes; and water per capita decline over time. The seven chapters provide details on the main challenges faced in each of the countries in the water sector. The chapters address the laws governing water use in the three economic sectors, water supply, water pricing and cost recovery and irrigation efficiency, and technology adoption. The increase of supply from non-conventional resources such as desalination and reuse of treated wastewater is analyzed. The chapters end up discussing how the countries are adapting to climate change and the role of research and innovations.
In this paper, we develop a two-stage analytical framework to investigate farming efficiency. In ... more In this paper, we develop a two-stage analytical framework to investigate farming efficiency. In the first stage, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed to estimate the efficiency of the farms and conduct slack and scale economies analyses. In the second stage, we propose a stochastic model to identify potential sources of inefficiency. The later model integrates within a unified structure all variables, including inputs, outputs and contextual factors. As an application ground, we use a sample of 60 farms from the Batinah coastal region, an agricultural area representing more than 53% of the total cropped area of Oman. The findings of the study lay emphasis on the interdependence of groundwater salinity, irrigation technology and farm’s operational efficiency, with as a key recommendation the necessity for more regulated water consumption and a readjustment of the government’s subsidiary policies.
An increase in groundwater storage in aquifers in arid areas improves water security. Most desali... more An increase in groundwater storage in aquifers in arid areas improves water security. Most desalination water production around the globe involves the private sector in the form of “build, operate, and transfer” or “build, operate, and own” agreements. Take-or-pay contracts are the most dominant contracts in the desalination industry. The water utility buys a fixed volume of water from the desalination company over a fixed period of 20 to 25 years. The contract between the two parties is established prior to building the plant to help ensure a profitable investment for all stakeholders. This regularly implies a surplus supply of desalinated water during low water demand periods. Given the absolute water scarcity in arid regions, maximizing the banking of surplus water in an aquifer is considered in this paper. For this purpose, a numerical groundwater flow simulation model, called MODFLOW, and a heuristic multiobjective optimizer, namely, NSGA-II, are coupled to optimize the injection and recovery of seasonal excess desalinated seawater in an alluvium coastal aquifer in Oman. Dual wells are considered for injection and abstraction of the water. The optimal daily abstraction and injection rates are determined by defining a multiobjective optimization framework. The four objective functions considered in this study are maximizing the total volume of desalinated water recharged into the aquifer; minimizing the groundwater losses to the sea; minimizing seawater intrusion by minimizing the maximum seasonal mean drawdown; and maximizing the total benefit from the recharge and recovery of the desalinated water. Analysis of the results revealed that we would be able to use 84% of the excess produced desalinated water (i.e., 8.4 of the 10 Mm 3 /year) that is currently returned to the sea. The net benefit from storage and recovery ranged between $14.77 million/year and $17.80 million/year. The increasing number of desalination plants at the global level calls for an integrated approach to bank the excess desalinated water and to improve the water security of coastal cities in arid and semiarid regions.
A mathematical model involving inverse optimization theory and data envelopment analysis (DEA) as... more A mathematical model involving inverse optimization theory and data envelopment analysis (DEA) as an eciency measurement tool has recently been developed to handle the reallocation of resources in the context of Mergers & Acquisitions (Gattou et al. [8]). This paper highlights the practical importance of these concepts through an application in the farming sector, using a sample of 45 farms from the Batinah region, in the sultanate of Oman. Through a random selection of potential merging farms, the proposed InvDEA method is shown to enable not only reallocating resources but also reversing the merger’s decision if the contribution of one of the merging entities is found to be poor. In order to gauge the practical importance of the InvDEA model, its application scope can be expanded to other sectors, like banking, insurance, education, healthcare, etc.
Arid countries, such as the Sultanate of Oman, are facing challenges of water shortages threateni... more Arid countries, such as the Sultanate of Oman, are facing challenges of water shortages threatening economic development and social stability. Most of those countries are vulnerable to the potential adverse impacts of climate change, the most significant of which are increased average temperatures, less and more erratic precipitation, sea level rise, and desertification. The combined effect of existing adverse conditions and likely impacts of future climate change will make water management even more difficult than what it is today. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to augment the water resources.
Combined simulation–optimization (CSO) schemes are common in the literature to solve different gr... more Combined simulation–optimization (CSO) schemes are common in the literature to solve different groundwater management problems, and CSO is particularly well-established in the coastal aquifer management literature. However, with a few exceptions, nearly all previous studies have employed the CSO approach to derive static groundwater management plans that remain unchanged during the entire management period, consequently overlooking the possible positive impacts of dynamic strategies. Dynamic strategies involve division of the planning time interval into several subintervals or periods, and adoption of revised decisions during each period based on the most recent knowledge of the groundwater system and its associated uncertainties. Problem structuring and computational challenges seem to be the main factors preventing the widespread implementation of dynamic strategies in groundwater applications. The objective of this study is to address these challenges by introducing a novel probabilistic Multiperiod CSO approach for dynamic groundwater management. This includes reformulation of the groundwater management problem so that it can be adapted to the multiperiod CSO approach, and subsequent employment of polynomial chaos expansion-based stochastic dynamic programming to obtain optimal dynamic strategies. The proposed approach is employed to provide sustainable solutions for a coastal aquifer storage and recovery facility in Oman, considering the effect of natural recharge uncertainty. It is revealed that the proposed dynamic approach results in an improved performance by taking advantage of system variations, allowing for increased groundwater abstraction, injection and hence monetary benefit compared to the commonly used static optimization approach.
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