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Gulf of Mexico Coastal County Resilience to Natural Hazards
Citation:
Summers, Kevin, L. Harwell, A. Lamper, C. McMillion, K. Buck, AND L. Smith. Gulf of Mexico Coastal County Resilience to Natural Hazards. Gulf and Caribbean Research. University of Southern Mississippi, Ocean Springs, MI, 32(1):67-78, (2021). https://doi.org/10.18785/gcr.3201.10
Impact/Purpose:
Application assesses the risk and resilience of Gulf of Mexico counties to natural hazards. Applications focuses on areas of county-level resilience that can be improved and some capacity building avenues to accomplish the increased capacity.
Description:
Using a Cumulative Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) that was developed to represent resilience to natural hazards at multiple scales for the United States, the U.S. coastal counties of the Gulf of Mexico region of the United States are compared for resilience for these types of natural hazards. The assessment compares the domains, indicators and metrics of CRSI, addressing environmental, economic and societal aspects of resilience to natural hazards at county scales. The index was applied at the county scale and aggregated to represent states and two regions of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM) coastline. Assessments showed county-level resilience in all GOM counties was low, generally below the U.S. average. Comparisons showed higher levels of resilience in the western GOM region while select counties in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama exhibited the lowest resilience (<2.0) to natural hazards. Some coastal counties in Florida and Texas represented the highest levels of resilience seen along the GOM coast. Much of this increased resilience appears to be due to higher levels of governance and broader levels of social, economic and ecological services.
