Ranran Wang

Ranran Wang

Ranran Wang
System dynamics, featuring framing, understanding, simulating, and communicating dynamic behaviors within interrelated social, managerial, economic, and ecological systems over time, is proposed to be a promising research approach that could facilitate our understanding in the field of water-­‐ energy nexus in the future.

2011 Urban Fellow

Research Topic: Water Resources

Faculty Advisor: Julie Zimmerman

Understand, Simulate, and Optimize the Water-Energy Nexus from a System Dynamics Perspective: Challenges and Opportunities

The interdependency between the world’s two most critical resources: water and energy, is receiving more and more attention from the academia as well as the general public. A comprehensive and in-­‐depth understanding of the water-­‐energy nexus is essential to achieve sustainable resource management. Following the structure of hierarchy of knowledge, this paper reviewed the evolution and progress of information, methodology, knowledge, and wisdom that have grown out of this field throughout the past 40 years. By synthesizing previous work, the paper identified existing knowledge gaps, as well as directions and challenges for prospective research. System dynamics, featuring framing, understanding, simulating, and communicating dynamic behaviors within interrelated social, managerial, economic, and ecological systems over time, is proposed to be a promising research approach that could facilitate our understanding in the field of water-­‐ energy nexus in the future.