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Food, energy, and water (FEW) security require adequate quantities and forms of each resource, conditions that are threatened by climate change and other factors. Assessing FEW security is important, and needs to be understood in the context of multiple factors. Existing frameworks make it hard to disentangle the contributors to FEW insecurity and to determine where best to expend efforts on short- and long-term solutions. We identified four consistent components of FEW security (availability, access, preference, quality). This framework provides detailed and nuanced insights into factors that limit or bolster security in each of the three sectors. The integrated framework identifies proximate and ultimate underlying causes of deficiencies in each security component providing opportunities to identify short- and long-term solutions. 

Food, energy, and water (FEW) are essential for human health and economic development. FEW systems are inextricably interlinked, yet individualized and variable. Consequently, an accurate assessment must include all available and proposed FEW components and their interconnections and consider scale, location, and scope. Remote Alaska locations are examples of isolated communities with limited infrastructure, accessibility, and extreme climate conditions. The resulting challenges for FEW reliability and sustainability create opportunities to obtain practical insights that may apply to other remote communities facing similar challenges. By creating energy distribution models (EDMs), a methodology is proposed, and a tool is developed to measure the impacts of renewable energy (RE) on small FEW systems connected to the microgrids of several Alaska communities. Observing the community FEW systems through an energy lens, three indices are used to measure FEW security: Energy–Water (EW), Energy–Food (EF), and Sustainable Energy (SE). The results indicate the impacts of RE on FEW infrastructure systems are highly seasonal, primarily because of the natural intermittence and seasonality of renewable resources. Overall, there is a large potential for RE integration to increase FEW security as well as a need for additional analysis and methods to further improve the resiliency of FEW systems in remote communities.