A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will document the impact and lessons-learned from multiple, compounding disasters that occurred across the Gulf coast region in 2020 – 2021. Within this two-year time period, Gulf coast communities experienced numerous billion-dollar extreme weather disasters, widespread energy infrastructure failures and the COVID-19 pandemic. These events occurred against a backdrop of persistent social and economic inequities, resulting in disproportionate impacts of these events on historically marginalized, disadvantaged, and excluded groups. The increasing frequency or severity of extreme weather events, amplified by climate change, will likely continue to exacerbate these impacts on the resilience of communities throughout the Gulf region.
This committee will:

• Describe the major disasters that occurred in the Gulf region during the two-year time period and, to the extent known, their impacts on community markers such as local economies, government functions, industry, the education system, human health, social structure.
• Discuss how these effects were compounded due to the sequencing of events as well as the factors that may have amplified these impacts (e.g., poverty, health disparities, economic and governance constraints, obsolete or inadequate infrastructure).
• Identify lessons learned from and needs exposed in how communities dealt with compounding disasters.
• Provide findings on what factors enabled or could enable communities to successfully plan for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the impacts of compounding disasters.