Capacity and Change in Climate Migrant-Receiving Communities Along the U.S. Gulf: A Three-Case Comparison

Description: Climate change is already driving population migrations, especially along the Gulf Coast. However, the capacity of destination communities to prepare for and integrate people who are displaced by natural disasters and climate change – known as climate migrants – has received little attention. This project will examine communities in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas that are already receiving climate migrants to determine the communities’ capacities to integrate them at the point of migration and the migrants’ effects on housing and employment markets, financial services, health care providers, and social and cultural facilities. The project team will use findings to develop actionable information that Gulf communities can use in their preparation for and integration of expected future climate migrants.

Climate, Culture, Movement: Navigating Decision-Making in a Shifting Landscape for a Resilient United Houma Nation

Description: The United Houma Nation is a Louisiana state-recognized tribe primarily based in southeastern Louisiana that is striving to maintain its unique culture amidst dramatic climatic, environmental, and socio-economic change. While tribal citizens have sustained livelihoods and communities in a shifting landscape for generations, today ongoing coastal land loss combined with the cumulative impacts of health, social, and economic disparities have created unprecedented challenges for the tribe. The goal of this project is to determine how the United Houma Nation can adapt to climate-related and other short- and long-term stressors while maintaining the integrity of its community and culture. The project team will collaborate with the United Houma Nation to examine existing and emerging stressors, identify resilience strategies, and produce actionable information, tools, and interventions that can be used by the tribe to navigate these challenges. Project outputs will be useful to other Gulf Coast communities facing similar issues.

Making Gulf Communities More Resilient: Scaling-up Customized Vulnerability Assessment for Extreme Events in Gulf Cities

Description: Communities along the Gulf coast are coping with stronger and more frequent storms that are expected to worsen in the future, and it is increasingly challenging to anticipate and prepare for these events. To increase their future resilience, cities need to plan to respond and adapt, yet many currently lack the capacity to do so. Enabling cities to engage more easily and consistently with scientists and organizations working on resilience and climate adaptation is a way to build this capacity, but cost-effectively maintaining and scaling up such engagement can be difficult. This project seeks to help cities build their climate adaptation capacities by finding more cost-effective methods to build relationships with scientists and organizations that can assist them. The project will use different technology-assisted communications methods to work with 60 cities throughout Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas to assess their vulnerability and integrate climate adaptation into existing planning processes. It will identify best practices that can guide similar efforts elsewhere.

The New First Line of Defense: Building Community Resilience through Residential Risk Disclosure

Description: The first line of defense for residents and their resilience is housing protected from natural hazard impacts. Yet many residents remain unaware that the building codes and zoning regulations they expect to protect them become outdated as environmental stressors, local development patterns, materials science, and construction practices change. Improved residential risk disclosure is a key component for building resilient communities. To make informed decisions about where to live and how to protect housing investments, residents require knowledge about potential natural hazard exposure and impacts along with available mitigation strategies. This project aims to advance community resilience by improving people’s understanding of risks and their willingness to undertake hazard mitigation when choosing where they live. The project team will work with communities throughout the Gulf region to test strategies for dissemination and uptake of information on disaster risk and mitigation alternatives. The ultimate goal is to identify practices most likely to result in residents taking actions to reduce risk and increase resilience.

Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Data: to assess the number of jobs and the number of residents with jobs at a given geography

Decennial Census and American Community Survey Data: to assess the number of people unemployed, the number of people in the labor force, the total population, and the number of people asked the employment question.

The Area Health Resources Files (AHRF): panel data at the county level to assess demand and supply changes in the health care system of residents of Louisiana and Florida

The County Health Rankings (CHR): panel data at the county level to assess demand and supply changes in the health care system of residents of Louisiana and Florida

American Community Survey 5-year demographic data

HUD Income Limits by household size for the year 2019 for all states and some overseas territories of the United States

Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates: Percent of Families in Poverty

Unemployment statistics for various counties within the Gulf of Mexico, California, Nevada, and New Jersey, from 2000 to 2022

Interviews with engagement participants of the FloodWise Communities project conducted in 2022-05-20 to 2023-08-25

Participant observation from online and in-person engagements of the FloodWise Communities conducted in 2021 and 2022

Datasets used to construct the weather and climate profiles for the FloodWise Communities project

Socioeconomic variables used in the Neighborhoods at Risk tool

Survey data from participants of the FloodWise Communities project, 2020-12-10 to 2021-11-01