Resumen
The U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is an excellent example of a working coast that supports a considerable degree of critical energy infrastructure across several sectors (crude oil, natural gas, electric power, petrochemicals) and functionalities (production, processing/refining, transmission, distribution). The coastal communities of the GOM form a highly productive and complicated human, physical, and natural environment that interacts in ways that are unlike anywhere else around the globe. This paper formulates a Coastal Infrastructure Vulnerability Index (CIVI) that characterizes interactions between energy assets and the physical and human aspects of GOM communities to identify and prioritize, using a multi-dimensional index, coastal vulnerability. The CIVI leads to results that are significantly different than traditional methods and serves as an alternative, and potentially more useful tool for coastal planning and policy, particularly in those areas characterized by very high infrastructure concentrations.