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electricity consumption is for pumping, treating, collecting, and discharging water
and wastewater (Copeland and Carter 2017). Water is heavy: extracting it from
rivers and streams, pumping it from aquifers, and conveying it over hills and into
storage facilities is a highly energy-intensive process.
The food system provides another interesting example of connections between
FEW infrastructure and services. Most of the bulk grains produced in the USA are
used as livestock feed or as inputs to biofuel processes, rather than being eaten by
people (Pimentel and Pimentel 2003). US livestock directly consume more than 7
times as much grain as the entire American population. The grains fed to U.S. livestock are sufficient to feed about 840 million people following a plant-based diet
(Pimentel and Pimentel 2003). Additionally, about 15% of the total global energy
consumption was derived from biomass in 2007, which threatens the food security
particularly in developing countries (Uhlenbrook 2007). Food production and transportation consumes about 10 percent of energy in the USA, and up to 30 percent of
global energy consumption (FAO 2011). Food production accounts for 70 percent
of global freshwater use. As food demand increases with population growth, it will
require both more water and more energy. In the USA, most of the water consumption is applied as irrigation water to grow crops and cooling thermoelectric power
(Maupin et al. 2010). Water supply infrastructure, food production transportation
and storage infrastructure, and fuel infrastructure are closely coupled.
Because FEW systems are interconnected and circular, there are infinite degrees
of dependency between the FEW system components and infrastructures. This is
not a simple, linear, efficient system defined entirely by inputs and outputs; rather,
it is a complicated, complex system with many redundant processes and pathways
that balance productivity, sustainability, risk, and resilience in the presence of randomness and uncertainty. An individual infrastructure component may be engineered as a simple linear system (e.g., a canal or roadway), but the assemblage of all
the FEW
e
components are not a simple linear system. Complexity and redundancy
is the key to the system’s resilience, but it also obscures the systems-level structure
and function and introduces the potential for unexpected outcomes.
Given the interdependency, circularity, complexity, and randomness involved in
the world’s FEW systems, and socio-ecological systems more generally, cascading
failures are an outcome that should be expected for FEW infrastructures. For example, cascading failures can occur when the electrical power grid failures quickly—
within seconds—cause food infrastructure failures via refrigeration and
transportation failures, and water infrastructure failures via pump and water treatment failures. Water and food failures can propagate to the energy system as well,
albeit on the timescale of days and months rather than seconds.
Traditional systems engineering strategies against cascading infrastructure
failures are redundancy, buffering, storage, and decoupling. Redundancy underpins resilience and reliability by allowing us to switch sources when one input is
disrupted. A backup power generator provides redundancy Buffering delays the
propagation of effects from one part of the network to another, increasing our ability
to wait out problems and slowing their impacts. Buffering can include demand
modification, for example water restrictions during drought. Storage serves as both
B. L. Ruddell et al.
electricity consumption is for pumping, treating, collecting, and discharging water
and wastewater (Copeland and Carter 2017). Water is heavy: extracting it from
rivers and streams, pumping it from aquifers, and conveying it over hills and into
storage facilities is a highly energy-intensive process.
The food system provides another interesting example of connections between
FEW infrastructure and services. Most of the bulk grains produced in the USA are
used as livestock feed or as inputs to biofuel processes, rather than being eaten by
people (Pimentel and Pimentel 2003). US livestock directly consume more than 7
times as much grain as the entire American population. The grains fed to U.S. livestock are sufficient to feed about 840 million people following a plant-based diet
(Pimentel and Pimentel 2003). Additionally, about 15% of the total global energy
consumption was derived from biomass in 2007, which threatens the food security
particularly in developing countries (Uhlenbrook 2007). Food production and transportation consumes about 10 percent of energy in the USA, and up to 30 percent of
global energy consumption (FAO 2011). Food production accounts for 70 percent
of global freshwater use. As food demand increases with population growth, it will
require both more water and more energy. In the USA, most of the water consumption is applied as irrigation water to grow crops and cooling thermoelectric power
(Maupin et al. 2010). Water supply infrastructure, food production transportation
and storage infrastructure, and fuel infrastructure are closely coupled.
Because FEW systems are interconnected and circular, there are infinite degrees
of dependency between the FEW system components and infrastructures. This is
not a simple, linear, efficient system defined entirely by inputs and outputs; rather,
it is a complicated, complex system with many redundant processes and pathways
that balance productivity, sustainability, risk, and resilience in the presence of randomness and uncertainty. An individual infrastructure component may be engineered as a simple linear system (e.g., a canal or roadway), but the assemblage of all
the FEW
e
components are not a simple linear system. Complexity and redundancy
is the key to the system’s resilience, but it also obscures the systems-level structure
and function and introduces the potential for unexpected outcomes.
Given the interdependency, circularity, complexity, and randomness involved in
the world’s FEW systems, and socio-ecological systems more generally, cascading
failures are an outcome that should be expected for FEW infrastructures. For example, cascading failures can occur when the electrical power grid failures quickly—
within seconds—cause food infrastructure failures via refrigeration and
transportation failures, and water infrastructure failures via pump and water treatment failures. Water and food failures can propagate to the energy system as well,
albeit on the timescale of days and months rather than seconds.
Traditional systems engineering strategies against cascading infrastructure
failures are redundancy, buffering, storage, and decoupling. Redundancy underpins resilience and reliability by allowing us to switch sources when one input is
disrupted. A backup power generator provides redundancy Buffering delays the
propagation of effects from one part of the network to another, increasing our ability
to wait out problems and slowing their impacts. Buffering can include demand
modification, for example water restrictions during drought. Storage serves as both
B. L. Ruddell et al.