Incorporating Social System into Water-Food-Energy Nexus

The current study introduces a conceptual socio-hydrological-based framework for the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. The proposed conceptual framework aims to investigate how farmers' dynamic agricultural activities under different socio-economic conditions affect the WEF systems. The WEF nexus model has been integrated with an Agent-Based Model, reflecting the farmers’ agricultural activities. Furthermore, the agent-based model benefits from Association Rule Mining to define farmer agents’ agricultural decision-making in various conditions. The processes within the WEF nexus are simultaneously physical, socio-economic, ecological, and political. Indeed, there are interrelated interactions among the mentioned processes in ways that have not yet been properly delineated and mapped. Thus, to obtain sustainable outcomes, the current study investigates trade-offs among natural resources and social systems in the WEF nexus approach. The proposed socio-hydrological WEF nexus framework may provide more in-depth future insights for policy-makers through capturing bidirectional feedbacks among farmers and WEF systems. In other words, the proposed framework can help policymakers to capture the dynamic impacts of agricultural activities by farmers on the WEF nexus, which may vary due to different socio-economic conditions.