A demonstration application of the Climate Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) in U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastal shoreline counties: Natural hazard events and socio-ecological characterizations

Background/Question/Methods: The sustainability of socio-ecological systems can be tied to measures of community resilience. In terms of natural hazard events, resilience characterizations provide a means of identifying risk profiles, degrees of preparedness and the ability of communities to respond and recover. Increasing resilience to natural hazard events helps promote and sustain community well-being over time. Given that all regions of the U.S. are threatened by acute climate and natural hazard events, nationally consistent measures of community resilience are needed to address widespread socio-ecological impacts of natural hazard events from a policy perspective. Additionally, geographically specific resilience characterizations are needed to target local resources to increase community resilience. The USEPA Office of Research and Development has developed a Climate Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) to characterize the resilience of socio-ecological systems in the context of governance and risk to natural hazard events. The index is a composite measure comprised of five domains (Risk, Governance, Society, Built Environment, and Natural Environment), represented by 20 indicators, calculated from 117 metrics. Originally, CRSI was developed for all U.S. counties for the years 2000-2015, with resilience characterizations based on the full range of nationwide county domain scores. Results/Conclusions: We present a rescaled application of CRSI where the geographies of county domain scores are limited to highlight and compare risk components, evaluate relative domain contributions to resilience, and delineate indicator contributions for U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastal shoreline counties. The CRSI values for selected counties are also presented in conjunction with Human Well-being Index (HWBI) scores and Location Quotients (LQ) based on ocean economy sectors. Using a combination of measures (CRSI, HWBI, LQ) can provide a more holistic picture of vulnerability and resilience in Gulf of Mexico coastal shoreline counties. The relative resilience assessments presented for these geographically specific areas are useful in identifying potential strengths and weaknesses in resilience aspects given similar hazard profiles. The information is intended to help communities identify opportunities to increase resilience in the face natural hazard events.