Developing a sustainable future requires the optimal integration and synergising of energy, agriculture and water sectors. As developing economies grow with rapid urbanisation, access to modern energy and water services should grow sustainably. Quantitative tools for planning and assessing national and basin scale infrastructure planning are essential for this. Issues of access and the challenges of biophysical and socioeconomic dynamics involved therein are often poorly reflected in plans. Integrated Assessment Modeling (IAMs) can allow for studying interactions between the economy, water use, energy use, and the environment. IAMs enable investigating long-term transition pathways in the context of climate change and shared socioeconomic pathways.

Most IAMs, however, are mainly global and at best regional, and as such do not adequately represent socio-hydrological mechanisms at smaller scale. On the other hand, basin scale studies often poorly reflect national and regional drivers. One of the main bottlenecks is the intrinsic difficulty in bridging the high-level system-oriented approach of IAMs with the strong dependency of the efficacy of plans on local socioeconomic and hydrological drivers. We invite contributions connecting fundamental and applied research for policy making, concepts and case studies to better understand how IAMs can be better utilised in infrastructure decisions at regional, country or basin scales.

Keys: Integrated Assessment Modelling, Water-Energy-Food Nexus, Infrastructure Decisions, Urbanization, Climate Change