Food, Water and Energy (FWE) are the essential nutrients of current and growing urban centers which sustain their vibrant operation and healthy urban metabolism. Our goal is to promote green urban centers of tomorrow by constructing effective transport and exchange mechanisms for FWE nutrients from sources to urban centers and then quantifying and optimizing the FWE factors related to societal health. We will identify critical FWE factors and define critical pathways of FWE delivery to urban centers using advanced tools such as Artificial Intelligence, data mining, system dynamics modeling, agro-logistics and scenario analysis. We seek to understand the intertwined nature of FWE in terms of their lifecycles, including production, processing, delivery, consumption, and disposal. To ensure a feasible work plan, we will establish direct engagement of the relevant stakeholders in the participating countries. Our underlying rationale is that FWE nexus, manifesting as a complex supply-chain network, forms the basis of the urban metabolic system that sustains the development of our urban centers. The primary outcome will be the development of the intelligent urban metabolic systems appropriate for cities in our consortium of nations and beyond where we see unique challenges for green urban centres of tomorrow.

This project will develop innovative and practical design solutions through stakeholder-engaged living labs in six different bioregions around the world to translate current FWE-nexus research towards implementation. Through this effort, three integrated knowledge platforms on Design, Evaluation and Participation capture interdisciplinary approaches to feed into participatory workshops, and thereby to the moveable nexus (M-NEX). The outputs and lessons learned will be publically disseminated via the open M-NEX platform. The first four international workshops investigate holistic themes (technology, people, geography and climate), which will then be integrated in the final two workshops on multiple scales (from buildings to city level).

The production and consumption of healthy food is ensured by addressing future climate change impacts and demographic and cultural changes, spanning scales from a single rooftop to an entire metropolitan region. The design outputs are the cornerstones of the entire field of possible solutions and are used to inspire individuals to undertake informed actions using the M-NEX platform. The decision support platform at the local governments level will be a powerful tool for integrating nexus thinking in FWE management.