Date of Award

Summer 2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Susan Cutter

Abstract

Coastal areas face a variety of natural hazards, many of which are increasing in frequency or severity due to climate change. Continued coastal development emphasizes the need for a better understanding of the impact of these hazards on coastal communities. This study aims to improve this understanding by investigating temporal, spatial, and causal patterns in county-level relative losses (RL) from hazards along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from 2001 to 2021. Three research questions are addressed: 1) Are relative losses increasing over time in coastal counties? 2) Where are the highest relative losses among coastal counties? and 3) Which hazards produce the largest losses among coastal counties?

Regression analysis, trend statistics, and ARIMA model forecasting reveal no significant trends in RL along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts or for any of their five coastal subregions over the two-decade study period. Regional ranking and hot spot analyses identify the most significant aggregate RL in the Western Gulf Region, reinforcing the area’s challenges in absorbing hazard losses. Flooding and Hurricane/Tropical Storm are two of the three largest loss-producing hazard types for the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and all five coastal subregions, and there are much fewer losses attributed to Coastal hazards than expected.

Rights

© 2025, Erin Kemp

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