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Abstract Sea-level rise (SLR) has drawn unprecedented attention from coastal communities around the world. In fact, many are already being affected and, in response, SLR vulnerability assessments have increasingly emerged in the US as the local communities' first attempt on the adaptation planning agenda. However, to date, little is known about these early planning endeavors in terms of how vulnerability is conceptualized and operationalized. By reviewing the current local SLR vulnerability assessments in the US, we find that most are only focusing on their biophysical exposure to SLR overlooking other important vulnerability factors including sensitivity and adaptive capacity. The limited number of SLR scenarios and the lack of consideration for extreme events are also considered as the major deficiencies. To fill these gaps, we propose a conceptual vulnerability assessment framework to operationalize the full concept of vulnerability and test it through a case study in the Tampa Bay region, Florida. By comparing the vulnerability results of the common practice with our proposed framework, we find large variances in the resulting findings stressing the importance of selecting the proper assessment approach. This paper finally concludes with urban planning and governance implications and future research directions. Coastal planner and managers wanting to improve their understanding of the communities' vulnerability to SLR will benefit from this study. Highlights • How coastal localities conceptualize and assess vulnerability varies. • Most of the existing sea-level rise vulnerability assessments only consider exposure. • A conceptual sea-level rise vulnerability assessment framework is developed. • The assessment approach can significantly affect vulnerability findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical infrastructures are essential for the society and economy. In recent years, climate change has been identified as an urgent and growing threat to critical infrastructures, and many studies have been conducted to assess the vulnerability of critical infrastructures to climate change. However, despite these research efforts, the vulnerability of critical infrastructures is often vaguely defined and inconsistently studied in the literature. This paper proposes a framework to analyze critical infrastructure's vulnerability to climate change based on the traditional vulnerability/sustainability framework and hazard-of-place model of vulnerability. The vulnerability assessment of emergency services to sea level rise and storm surge in Collier County, Florida, is taken as an example to validate the proposed framework. Flood simulation, comparisons of storm surge models, spatial analysis, and network-based service area analysis are conducted to assess the vulnerability of fire stations in the case study area. The vulnerability assessment identifies the predominant hazard risk and the exposed infrastructures, analyzes the sensitivity of serviceability, and evaluates the effectiveness of potential adaptive capacity. The results show that the fire stations in the case study area are more vulnerable to the potential landfall and changes in hurricane and tropical cyclone patterns compared to the flooding caused directly by sea level rise. It indicates that the lack of consideration of potential landfall and changes in storms could greatly underestimate the vulnerability to climate change, especially in coastal areas with limited historical tidal data. The analysis also illustrates the current floodplain management that focuses primarily on the 100-year flood may not be a sufficient standard for all regions given the potential changes in frequency and magnitude of climate-related hazards. Finally, it confirms that disaster risk management strategies could also contribute to climate change adaptation. The weak linkages between existing climate change adaptation and disaster risk management need to be strengthened. The proposed concept and framework could be generalized and expanded to other critical infrastructures, regions, and climate-related hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing damage on the ground is a challenging task for humanitarian organizations and disaster managers due to the limited availability of data and methods for processing. As the most commonly adopted data source, remote sensing imagery can only reflect the damage situation on top of a building and fails to present the damage level from the perspective of the human eye. Recently, an increasing number of Google Street View (GSV) images provide the chance to understand the human's perception of damage on the ground. However, to automatically and quantitatively apply GSV images in damage assessment, two research questions need to be answered: (1) Can deep learning be successfully applied to automate the process of evaluating postdisaster damage using GSV images? (2) Does damage assessment using GSV images provide a different insight, compared with existing approaches, such as remote sensing imagery? Based on our experiments using GSV images and remote sensing imagery in Mexico Beach, FL after Hurricane Michael, we present two conclusions: (1) By applying a deep learning model, the GSV-based damage assessment can be satisfactorily and automatically conducted, with an accuracy of approximately 70% for a single GSV image. (2) GSV images provide a different insight into damage assessment since remote sensing imagery cannot record the damage to exterior walls, windows, doors and facades. When the overall damage level is relatively low, GSV images show better performance in damage assessment. Conversely, when the overall damage level is relatively high, remote sensing imagery shows better performance based our experiments. • Damage assessments can be automatically derived from Google Street View images. • GSV images provide a different insight into damage assessment. • GSV images have better performance in assessing a building with mild damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clostridioides difficile, the primary cause of nosocomial antibiotic-associated diarrhea, has a complex relationship with antibiotics. While the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics disrupts the gut microbiota and increases the risk of C. difficile infection (CDI), antibiotics are also the primary treatment for CDI. However, only a few antibiotics, including vancomycin, fidaxomicin, and rifaximin, are effective against CDI, and resistance to these antibiotics has emerged recently. In this study, we report the identification of two RT027 C. difficile clinical isolates (TGH35 and TGH64) obtained from symptomatic CDI-diagnosed patients in Tampa, Florida in 2016. These two strains showed an elevated minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of vancomycin (MIC = 4 μg/mL, compared to the EUCAST breakpoint of 2 μg/mL) and contained a vanR Cd 343A>G mutation resulting in a Thr115Ala substitution in the VanR Cd response regulator. This mutation was absent in the vancomycin-sensitive control epidemic strain RT027/R20291. TGH64 was also resistant to rifaximin (MIC ≥ 128 μg/mL) and carried the previously reported Arg505Lys and Ile548Met mutations in RpoB. Furthermore, we report on the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and genomic characterization of additional C. difficile isolates, including RT106/TGH120, RT017/TGH33, and RT017/TGH51, obtained from the same patient sample cohort representing the highly prevalent and regionally distributed C. difficile ribotypes worldwide. Considering that the VanR Cd Thr115Ala mutation was also independently reported in seven C. difficile clinical isolates from Texas and Israel in 2019, we recommend epidemiological surveillance to better understand the impact of this mutation on vancomycin resistance. IMPORTANCE 343A>G) that causes a Thr115Ala substitution and is linked to an increased MIC of vancomycin in clinical isolates of C. difficile obtained from Florida in 2016. Understanding the mechanisms of AMR, especially those of newly evolving strains, is essential to effectively guide antibiotic stewardship policies to combat antibiotic resistance as well as to discover novel therapeutic targets.vanR Cd 343A>G) that causes a Thr115Ala substitution and is linked to an increased MIC of vancomycin in clinical isolates of C. difficile obtained from Florida in 2016. Understanding the mechanisms of AMR, especially those of newly evolving strains, is essential to effectively guide antibiotic stewardship policies to combat antibiotic resistance as well as to discover novel therapeutic targets., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.