Assessing Urban Water–Energy–Food Security: A Case of Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

Water–energy–food (WEF) risks and security are widely concerned, but there are few quantitative studies on WEF security assessment, especially lacking of researches at the urban scale. This paper puts forward a measurement framework for assessing urban WEF security from social and economic perspectives, including dimensions of availability, accessibility, affordability, safety, and stability, and applies it to the WEF security assessment in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA) by using an extended Multi-attribute Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC) method based on cloud model-CRITIC method and game theory. Based on the evaluation, social network analysis is used to study relations between cities in urban WEF security and determines key cities in the network. Results show that urban WEF security in most cities are positive; five dimensions of the WEF security level in each city show unbalanced characteristics; the level of energy security varies greatly among cities, followed by water and food security; urban WEF security from an economic perspective in most cities are positive, while it from a social perspective in almost half cities are positive; the spatial relation network of urban WEF security in YRUDA presents a core–edge structure; key cities in the region include Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou. The evaluation framework and models help comprehensively evaluate urban WEF security at social and economic levels and put forward suggestions to enhance urban WEF security and promote horizontal cooperation among cities.