Initial Survey 123 Results

I was able to get 14 responses to my initial survey this week. I wanted to know about people's experience with coastal erosion at their favorite beach. I chose the prompt "your favorite beach" because I wanted to have a personal hook into the value of the survey. Additionally, I operated under the assumption that if a beach is someone's favorite they probably visit often and would therefore have observed changes in the beach.

Below are some highlights of the data from the analysis tab of the Survey 123 dashboard.

Roughly 87% of participants were Oahu residents. The most popular beach represented by the survey was Kalama Beach Park in Kailua. Most participants answered questions about beaches on the south shore of the island but few chose the same beach. These included; Ala Moana, Sandys, Kahala and Hunakai and Diamond Head area.

The primary reasons these beaches were cited as favorites was for proximity, cleanliness and lack of crowds.

When asked about coastal infrastructure and beach erosion many participants either stated that they had noticed some change or hadn't really paid attention. When asked about preventative infrastructure majority felt that seawalls and groins are Necessary but ugly and possibly even damaging. One limit to this set of questions that I received feedback on was that some participants were unsure of what some of the features mentioned looked like. In the future it would be helpful then to include descriptive imagery or diagrams.

In the data tab of the Survey 123 dashboard I exported the map data and saved as a feature layer in the Map viewer. This allowed me to see the distribution of answers spatially as well as click on individual points to see metadata specific to that response.

Respondents from the south shore were both familiar with the idea of beach nourishment and the majority (all but one) supported this effort to maintain sandy beach access. Those who responded that they did not know what beach nourishment was chose their favorite beach in an area were this action has not occurred.

Of the types of structures surveyed Seawalls were heavily cited as a feature which participants felt negatively impacted their time on the beach. As mentioned earlier, further surveys may need to distinguish a clear difference between groins/jetties and seawalls with images.

Overall participants felt strongly about the importance of beach erosion as an issue and disagreed that the state's response and efforts were sufficient in addressing the problem.