Gulf of Mexico Coastal County Resilience to Natural Hazards

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 (GOM) 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. 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