Despite recent gains in global agricultural productivity, sustained, equitable, and stable access to food continues to be a concern in many parts of the world. This interdisciplinary research project will examine why people in one region are faced with food insecurities in order to gain insights that will have wide-ranging utility. This project will enhance understanding of the critical societal problem of food security and will communicate potential solutions to decision makers by developing tools that synthesize qualitative and quantitative information from geography, sociology, decision science, and sustainability science as well as cross-disciplinary knowledge on food insecurity. Because food security is a complex problem that involves many stakeholders across different spatial scales and within different contexts, the investigators will use computer modeling to enhance understanding of the key elements of the food system, explain food insecurity, and provide tools for long-term policy making for improved food availability, access, and stability.
This research project will focus on a study of food insecurity in dryland West Africa, a region where changing environmental conditions and socioeconomic systems have left many people hungry despite increases in agricultural productivity. The investigators will develop and test a collection of small, independent computer models to describe and analyze different aspects of the food system. They will use mental modeling, multilevel structural equation modeling, agent-based modeling embedded in a geographic information system, and system dynamics modeling in an integrative, participatory, and iterative manner in order to examine mechanisms affecting food security. Mental modeling will help depict and communicate stakeholder perceptions, while multilevel structural equation modeling will be used to explain how individual attributes and structural factors affect food availability. Agent-based modeling embedded in a geographic information system will help describe spatial and temporal variability of food access, thereby explaining how individual behaviors link with livelihood vulnerability, while system dynamic models will evaluate how the dynamics of climate change, drought, hunger, and humanitarian relief over time impact on food security. Each model will build a progressively richer understanding of the problem, and an overarching scenario study tool will encapsulate the models and provide a transdisciplinary platform for synthesizing information from the models through scenario generation and evaluation. Model development, evaluation, and application will be informed by on-the-ground discussions with stakeholders in the study region. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.
