<p>Changing climate poses significant threats to food security and sustainability, among which the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 on Zero Hunger is. Food security challenges may impact more on urban areas that are service based in structure as they may not be equipped to produce food locally. By integrating food security dimensions, a holistic analysis of impacts is ensured thereby creating a more informed options-actions continuum oriented (scalable) solution; a key purpose of the Actionable Science for Urban Sustainability (AScUS). We analysed (rice) food security based on the four Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recommended dimensions; availability, access, stability and utilization from 2008 – 2017 using FAO rice export-import data tables. Availability is an index of volume traded and access is a price-based index per tonne of rice. Stability and utilization measured the consistency of trading countries involved, and their influence in the trade network per time respectively. Availability did increase over the years from 2008 – 2017 globally with almost 15M tonnes margin, while access decreased by almost 22% thus cheaper to purchase a tonne of rice in 2017 compared to 2008. The trade network remained relatively stable within a range of 0.75 – 0.89, with the lowest value in 2014 when a few new importers emerged. The influence was scored using the eigen vector value, and the ranks confirm the importance of India and Thailand as key players (weighted), with Nigeria, Iran and Benin as influential countries (directional) in the network. We advocate caution in interpreting results as the global standing does not necessarily imply good urban city and or national standing. Our framework does however successfully show the added value of an integrated assessment; and illustrates the need for similar approaches in measuring urban sustainability and resilience at different scales.</p>