Water Risk Network

Much work has been done to evaluate environmental impacts of international trade. Little attention has been paid to the other side of the coin, implications of the environmental challenges to the trade system. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this project addresses this intellectual gap using water scarcity risk as a case study. The project develops a probabilistic network analysis framework integrates methods from multiple fields, including input-output analysis, risk analysis, and network analysis. The integration of these methods is a unique contribution to research in sustainability implications of international trade. It allows evaluating cascading impacts of local water scarcity to upstream and downstream supply chains for each industry in each country of the global trade network. Multiple factors contributing to water scarcity risk are considered simultaneously, including the dependence of industries on local water resources, severeness of water scarcity across countries and river basins, and interconnectedness of the global trade network. This project focuses on industries in countries as the unit of analysis, improving the resolution of relevant, limited studies in the literature focusing only on countries.