IWRA World Water Congress 2025 Marrakech Morocco
Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems Nexus - WEFE NEXUS
Author(s): Ilya Zaslavsky, Lilit Yeghiazarian, Wael Al-Delaimy
Ilya Zaslavsky(1), Lilit Yeghiazarian(2), Wael Al-Delaimy(1)
1. University of California San Diego
2. University of Cincinnati
December 1, 2025, 2:30-4pm
Oral: PDFAbstractProblem: Water-Energy Nexus is a complex system, but
- Water and energy are managed in isolation
- Policy landscape is fragmented
- Data are siloed
Need a data integration framework!
Questions at Nexus of Water-Energy
- Water supply: What are the current and future threats to water availability to meet water and energy needs
- Water and energy demand: How much is being used, where and for what purpose
- Threat: What are the current and future threats to water and energy infrastructure?
- Rules/regulations: Which rules/regulations currently support integrated thinking about water/energy?
Different Projects – Common Lessons
Data integration framework is a key challenge in nexus projects, with data from different agencies and systems, with misaligned spatial grids, temporal resolutions, data formats, etc.
Key ingredients of a solution:
- Easy to use standards-compliant catalogs and data access • Focus on data semantics
- Integration framework tuned to specific project challenges
- Careful application of generative AI – to ensure reproducible and explainable science
- Modular and flexible architectures, using free open-source modules, region-agnostic