In August, an NCCOS collection of community well-being data for the Gulf of Mexico went live on NOAA's Gulf Data Atlas. The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Community Well-being Data incorporates a variety of publicly available social, economic, and environmental quantitative data collected by federal, state, and local agencies. Data is available for the coastal states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

This collection is based upon a framework for measuring coastal well-being at the county level developed by NCCOS and completed in September 2013. The degree to which a population is able to meet its basic needsdetermines its level of community well-being. The specific components of well-being measured in the NCCOS framework are: Social Connectedness, Economic Security, Basic Needs, Health, Access to Social Services, Education, Safety, Governance, and Environmental Condition.

Initially this work was conducted for a sample of 37 coastal counties and included three time periods. As part of the Gulf of Mexico Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA), the application of the indicators now includes 139 coastal and watershed counties of the US Gulf of Mexico and five time periods. Within the IEA framework, this work paves the way for the quantification of the connection between ecosystem condition and coastal communities. A complete description of the data collection and the methodology are available here.

To learn more contact: Maria Dillard and Kyle Buck.