Water & Energy Resources and National Security

CSIS and Congressman Linder's House Water Caucus held a briefing on WATER 3 31 09

Howard D. Passell, PhD
Water and Energy Resources Ecologist, Sandia National Laboratories (national security labs focusing on macro level)

VALUE OF FUNCTIONING ECOSYSTEMS is TWICE THE VALUE OF GLOBAL GDP
Functioning ecosystems are basis of all human security and prosperity – we cannot ignore complexities and interdependencies any more.
Food riots – link to water – link to security: all integrated crises. World population at 6.5b going to 8b, plus increased per capita demand for water, is posing severe security threats.
Soft power can be projected by ecosystem services as integral part of US National Security. An “Earth Systems Science Agency” has been proposed to integrate physical social environmental data across US Government agencies.

We need to be proactive and ask questions such as How does cholera outbreak and ecosystem decline affect national security in Zimbabwe, RSA, USA?
Need database, modeling of ecosystems, impact on political sphere, ability to evaluate tradeoffs and relative values of various mitigation schemes.

Declines in functioning ecosystems can lead to illness, conflict, downwards spiral. Integrated solutions more effective than separate independent approaches – water not separate from population or climate change or energy, fishing, agriculture, food security. Well functioning watersheds prevent flooding and ensure filtering, storage.

Explore this web portal - https://waterportal.sandia.gov/ - the web design is very similar to GRS. Many of the postings are a bit old, but the key person there is a brilliant forward thinker. His work is perfectly aligned with Resilience Systems.

There are PDFs of how to run System Dynamics simulations:

See for example
System Dynamics Modeling using PowersimStudio:
Introductory Training Materials
Marissa D. Reno, Howard D. Passell, Jesse D. Roach, Leonard A. Malczynski, Vincent C. Tidwell
SAND2007-6925 P
Unlimited Release
November 2007