With the increasing threat to water, energy, and food resources world-wide, it is highly imperative to manage these resources sustainably. This study develops an optimal crop area allocation model based on a novel nexus-sustainability index (NSI), integrating the water use, energy use (environmental dimension); land use, labour use (social dimension); yield return, and per capita food production (economic dimension) indicators in agricultural food production. This NSI-based model is evaluated in a reservoir-canal command for optimal water and energy uses and, subsequently, compared with the conventional models of Net-Economic Return (NER), Water-Food (W-F) nexus, and Energy-Food (E-F) nexus based approaches using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) analysis. The comparative results revealed that the NSI-based model is the best that could save water, energy and labour resources by 36.82(±1.91)%, 23.72(±2.47)%, and 2.29(±0.16)% during the Kharif season; and 17.5(±0.59)%, 19.82(±1.52)%, and 2.02(±0.42)% during the Rabi season as compared to the existing condition, respectively, enhancing the net economic return by 56.53(±3.28)% and 79.96(±2.97)% during the corresponding seasons, respectively. Finally, it is advocated that the NSI-based approach could manage the water and energy resources sustainably ensuring security in the local water-energy-land-food (WELF) nexus.

随着世界范围内对水，能源和粮食资源的威胁越来越大，必须可持续地管理这些资源。这项研究建立了一个基于新的关系-可持续性指数（NSI）的最优作物面积分配模型，该模型综合了用水，能源使用（环境维度）；土地利用，劳动力利用（社会规模）；粮食产量中的单产回报率和人均粮食产量（经济规模）指标。基于NSI的模型在水库-运河命令中进行了评估，以优化水和能源的使用，随后与净经济收益（NER），水-食物（WF）关系和能源-食物（ EF）使用多准则决策（MCDM）分析的基于关系的方法。哈里夫季节；与现有条件相比，拉比季节分别为17.5（±0.59）％，19.82（±1.52）％和2.02（±0.42）％，分别将净经济收益提高了56.53（±3.28）％和79.96（相应季节分别为±2.97）％。最后，提倡基于NSI的方法可以可持续地管理水资源和能源，从而确保当地水，能源，土地，粮食（WELF）联系的安全性。