Appendix C
Commissioned Paper Abstracts
Note: The commissioned papers may be accessed on the National Academies Press website https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27170
Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020–2021: Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned in Jefferson Davis and Marion Counties, Mississippi
Jennifer Trivedi
Abstract:
This work explores disasters that affected Jefferson Davis and Marion Counties, Mississippi, in 2020 and 2021 as part of an effort to better understand compounding disasters in the Gulf Coast region. Understanding the ways these two counties and the people who live there were affected by, coped with, and moved through these disasters as concurrent processes, rather than static or momentary events (affected by what came before and what continued after), is important for understanding the larger implications, history, and future of compounding disasters in Gulf Coast communities. In the United States, since COVID-19 spread nationwide, other disasters have become compounding disasters as they have overlapped in time and space with COVID-19, leaving emergency managers, government officials, businesses, and residents to respond to COVID-19 and other disasters simultaneously—a situation complicated by local cultural, historical, political, and economic contexts.
How a Changing Societal Landscape Is Shaping Gulf Coast Tropical Cyclone and Tornado Disasters
Stephen Strader
Abstract:
This study examines how tropical cyclone and tornado risk, exposure, and vulnerability are changing over time within the conterminous United States, Gulf Coast region, and eight representative counties and parishes in the Gulf Coast region. Findings indicate that although landfalling tropical cyclone and tornado events have not increased in frequency in the Gulf Coast region, societal and built environment exposure to these events has been rapidly amplified during the last 80 years. Since 1940, the numbers of people and housing units in the Gulf Coast region have increased by 433 percent and 2,818 percent, respectively. Results outlining changes in social vulnerability metrics from 2000 to 2018 are varied for the conterminous United States, Gulf Coast region, and selected counties. For instance, socioeconomic vulnerability measures assessed in this study (e.g., income, poverty, education) increased during the 18-year vulnerability analysis period across all domains, while measures of vulnerability in household composition and disability, minority status and language, and housing type and transportation have slightly decreased or stayed the same over time in the study domains. Nevertheless, social vulnerability in the Gulf Coast region continues to be approximately 25 percent higher than in the conterminous United States as a whole. Outcomes from this study may be used to assist policymakers, emergency managers, and stakeholders in developing or improving existing hazard mitigation plans, including building community resilience to hazards in the context of a changing climate and society.