• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.45-53
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• 2018

Demand for essential resources including water, energy and food is rapidly increasing due to climate change, population growth and urbanization. To solve this problem, the concept of water-energy-food nexus has been introduced, and many countries have been trying to acquire the Nexus technology that can maximize the efficiency by analyzing the interconnection between resources. In this regard, this study attempted to estimate the probable maximum water thermal energy in the dam based on the water-energy nexus concept. The estimation of the probable maximum water thermal energy was implemented to monthly water storage of the largest dams in the four major river systems. As a result of analyzing the estimated monthly water thermal energy from 2000 to 2016, Soyang River dam has the largest probable maximum water thermal energy, and Sumjin River dam has the smallest. However, the probable maximum water thermal energy was small in common between March and April, between September and October due to the small temperature difference between the ambient air and the dam water. Also, according to the characteristics of the dam, Daecheong dam and Soyang River dam were beneficial for supplying water thermal energy for heating, and Sumjin River dam and Andong dam were advantageous for supplying water thermal energy for cooling. Our findings can be useful to realize the water-energy-food nexus by increasing the utilization and value of water resources as well as expanding the roles and functions of dams as a starting point to use dam water thermal energy.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2019.05a
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• pp.163-163
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• 2019

The rapidly growing global population increases the awareness of water, energy, and food security worldwide. The concept of Water, Energy, and Food nexus (hereafter, WEF nexus) has been widely introduced as a new resources management concept that integrate the water, energy, and food in a single management framework. Recently, WEF nexus analyzes not only the interconnections among the resources, but also considers the external factors (such as environment, climate change, policy, finance, etc) to enhance the resources sustainability by proper understanding of their relations. A nation-level resources management is quite complex task since multiple regions (e.g., watersheds, cities, and counties) with different characteristics are spatially interconnected and transfer the resources each other. This study proposes a multiple region WEF nexus simulation and transfer model. The model is equipped with three simulation modules, such as local nexus simulation module, regional resources transfer module, and optimal investment planning module. The model intends to determine an optimal capital investment plan (CIP), such as build-up of power plants, water/waste water treatment plants, farmland development and to determine W-E-F import/export decisions among areas. The objective is to maximize overall resources sustainability while minimize financial cost. For demonstration, the proposed model is applied to a semi-hypothetical study area with three different characterized cities. It is expected the model can be used as a decision support tool for a long-term resources management planning process.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.220-220
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• 2015

Water, energy, and food security already became a risk that threatens people around the world. Increasing of resources demand, rapid urbanization, decreasing of natural resources and climate change are four major problems inducing resources' scarcity. Indeed, water, energy, and food are interconnected each other thus cannot be analyzed separately. That is, for simple example, energy needs water as source for hydropower plant, water needs energy for distribution, and food needs water and energy for production, which is defined as W-E-F nexus. Due to their complicated linkage, it needs a computer model to simulate and analyze the nexus. Development of a computer simulation model using system dynamics approach makes this linkage possible to be visualized and quantified. System dynamics can be defined as an approach to learn the feedback connections of all elements in a complex system, which mean, every element's interaction is simulated simultaneously. Present W-E-F nexus models do not calculate and simulate the element's interaction simultaneously. Existing models only calculate the amount of water and energy resources that needed to provide food, water, or energy without any interaction from the product to resources. The new proposed model tries to cope these lacks by adding the interactions, climate change effect, and government policy to optimize the best options to maintain the resources sustainability. On this first phase of development, the model is developed only to learn and analyze the interaction between elements based on scenario of fulfilling the increasing of resources demand, due to population growth. The model is developed using the Vensim, well-known system dynamics model software. The results are amount of total water, energy, and food demand and production for a certain time period and it is evaluated to determine the sustainability of resources.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.240-246
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• 2022

Water and energy are inextricably linked and referred to as 'Water-Energy Nexus'. Recently, this topic has been drawing a lot of attention from various studies due to the exacerbated water availability. Korea's water and energy consumption has been increasing consistently, which calls for better management. This paper aims to identify changes in electricity consumption in relation to water intake and purification processes. Using Log Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) Decomposition Analysis method, this study attributes the changes to major factors such as; Total population (population effect), household/population (structure effect), GDP/household (economic effect), and water-related energy use/GDP (unit effect). The population effect, structure effect, and economic effect contributed to an increase in water-related electricity consumption, while the unit effect contributed to a decrease. As of 2019, the economic effect increased the water supply sector's electricity consumption by 534 GWh, the population effect increased by 73 GWh, and the structure effect increased by 243 GWh. In contrast, the unit effect decreased the electricity consumption by -461 GWh. We would like to make the following suggestions based on the findings of this study; first, the unit effect must be improved by increasing the energy efficiency of water intake and purification plants and installing renewable energy power generation facilities. Second, the structure effect is expected to increase over time, and to mitigate it, water consumption must be reduced through water conservation policies and the improvement of water facilities. Finally, the findings of this study are expected to be used as foundational data for integrated water and energy management.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2016.05a
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• pp.190-190
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• 2016

The Water, Energy, and Food (WEF) nexus is an emerging concept for sustainable resources planning and management. The three valuable resources are inevitably interconnected, that is, it takes water to produce energy; it takes energy to extract, treat, and distribute water; and both water and energy are required to produce food. Although it is challenging to fully understand the complicated interdependency, a few studies have been devoted to interpret the concept and develop the assessment tools. The tools were mainly developed for nation-wide simulations without considering inter-basin or inter-state resources trade. This study tries to present an idea to develop and implement the WEF nexus simulation model in regional scale by advancing the existing nation-wide model with additional capability to simulate the inter-basin trade. This simulation could help local planners and engineers to determine optimal policies and infrastructure solutions to reach and ensure local demand satisfaction. The simulation model is implemented in hypothetical areas with different conditions of WEF demands and supplies. Although the inter-basin trade scenarios are simulated manually, it shows that the inter-basin resources trade could enhance the resources security for a longer time period. In future, an optimization model might be developed to provide the automatic calculation to reach optimum amount of WEF for the trade, which can be a helpful tool in decision making process.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2018.05a
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• pp.153-153
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• 2018

Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus is a new holistic resources management concept that considers the interconnections among resources for sustainable resources planning and management. The current challenge is to fulfill the required demand in the lack of available resources. A traditional way to provide more available resource is by increase in production, but it caused increment of indirect demand of other interlinked resources. Importing resources from other area (where local supply is redundant) is another option to secure local resources with additional economic expenditure. The WEF nexus-trading model adapts the previously developed nationwide nexus simulation model with additional input parameters and functions to simulate trading scenarios. In general, the analysis starts with the quantification of local resources deficit (potential importing amount) and redundancy (potential exporting amount) of each area. Then, a trade module is initiated by determining possible donor area and importation amount. Finally, the nexus simulation for all area is re-run to determine final resources supply-demand results including the trading amount. The trade option provides an opportunity to meet local demands without draining local resources. However, the production capability of donor area may limit the importation amount. The newly developed trade option allows more alternatives for stakeholders to determine resources management plans.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.587-602
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• 2023

Due to climate change, population growth, and economic development, the demand for water in the urban water system (UWS) and the energy required for water use constantly increase. Therefore, beyond the traditional method of considering only the water sector, the Nexus approach, which considers synergies and trade-offs between the water and energy sectors, has begun to draw attention. In previous researches, the Nexus methodology was used to demonstrate that the UWS is an energy-intensive system, analyze the water-energy efficiency relationship surrogated by energy intensity, and identify climate (long-term climate change, drought, type), geographic characteristics (topography, flat ratio, location), system characteristics (total supply water amount, population density, pipeline length), and operational management level (water network pressure, leakage rate, water saving) effects on the UWS. Through this, it was possible to suggest the direction of policies and institutions to UWS managers. However, there was a limit to establishing and implementing specific action plans. This study built the energy intensity matrix of the UWS, quantified the impact of city conditions, external influences, and operational management levels on the UWS using the water-energy Nexus model, and introduced water-energy efficiency criteria. With this, UWS managers will be able to derive strategies and action plans for efficient operation management of the UWS and evaluate suitability and validity after implementation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.35-45
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• 2019

Korean agriculture experienced rapid changes in its production structure to respond fluctuations on external conditions, and these changes have increased the dependence between agricultural resources and negative environmental externalities from agricultural production. As a tool for managing agricultural resources and reducing negative environmental effects from agricultural production, this study employs water-energy-food nexus for integrated resource management. To show the necessity of an integrated approach, this study evaluated three policy scenarios including changes in capital interest, water capacity, and energy cost. The results show that three scenarios have unintended consequences for farmers' incomes and their use of resources. Also the unintended consequences of government policies also affected farms' vulnerability to environmental changes. In particular, the expansion of financing for the establishment of non-circulating water curtain facilities did not have a significant effect on the crop switching of farms. In addition, increasing the amount of available water through the aquifer recharge project leads to the installation of non-circulating water curtain facilities in zucchini farm. It raises dependence on groundwater in agricultural production, thereby increasing farmers' vulnerability to groundwater shortages. These results imply that the agricultural sector needs to consider the interrelationship between agricultural resources when designing or evaluating policies.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.184-184
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• 2017

A nation-wide water-energy-food (WEF) nexus simulation model has been developed by the authors and successfully applied to South Korea to predict the sustainability of those three resources in the next 30 years. The model was also capable of simulating future scenarios of resources allocation based on priority rules aiming to maximize resources sustainability. However, the process was still relying on several assumptions and trial-and-error approach, which sometimes resulted in non-optimal solutions of resources allocation. In this study, an optimization module was introduced to enhance the model in generating optimal resources management rules. The objective of the optimization was to maximize the reliability index of resources by determining the resources' allocation and/or priority rules for each demand type that accordingly reflect the resources management policies. Implementation of the optimization module would result in balanced allocation and management of limited resources and assist the stakeholders in deciding resources' management plans, either by fulfilling the domestic production or by global trading.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.93-103
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• 2018

The aim of this study is to apply the Water-Energy-Food-Land Nexus approach which can analyze the trade-offs among resources, and assess the holistic impacts of food security. First, we applied rice as a study crop and analyzed the trend of consumption of rice and the area of paddy fields. Second, the portfolios of water, energy, and land for rice production were constructed using data of footprints and productivity. Finally, the self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) of rice in target year was set as food security scenario and assessed the impacts of food security on water, energy, and land availability. In 2030, the SSR of rice decreased to 87 %, and water use for producing rice decreased from 4,728 to $3,350million\;m^3$, and the water availability index increased from 0.33 to 0.53. However, food security is essential issue and we set the 50 % and 100 % SSR of rice as high and low food security scenarios. For 100% SSR in 2030, about $3,508million\;m^3$ water was required and water availability index reached to 0.5. In other words, there is the trade-off between food security and water-energy-lands availability. Therefore, it is difficult to make a decision whether a high level of SSR is better or worse. However, this study showed the both positive and negative impacts by change of food security and it can be useful for setting the policy decision considering both food security and sustainable resource management at the same time.