Measuring Oman's Food Security Outlook for Crisis Aversion
Abstract
Insecurity of food and water supplies in the Arabian Gulf is an important concern for stability in the region, where national security policy and food security policy interrelate. In Oman, population growth at 4.98% between 2003 and 2013, an expatriate community comprising 44% of the total population, salinization issues and sinking groundwater tables, rising obesity, a culture of overindulgence, an overreliance on imported food, and instability in the international marketplace threaten the adequacy of the food and water supply. This project endeavors to quantify the sensitivity of Oman s food security strategy to various shocks with a Bayesian belief network (BBN). A BBN is a model that estimates changes in conditional probability, given assumptions about the causal relationships between variables. In this present study, the probability that the daily energy supply (DES) exceeds a healthy lower bound, estimated at 2100 kilocalories/person/day, serves as the primary output of the BBN. The inputs to the BBN are eighteen variables organized into four categories: energy, trade, domestic agriculture, and human factors. Statistical analyses connect each of these input variables to historical effects on the output variable, DES. The BBN is then used to test the sensitivity of DES in possible future scenarios. Beyond the specific model results, this effort also serves as a template and model for building future studies that could help identify and avert crises before they happen.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 18, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA619145
Entities
People
- Andrea R. Howard
Organizations
- United States Naval Academy