A Sea Level Rise Resilient Design for the Royal Hawaiian Groin, Waikiki, Hawaii

The Royal Hawaiian groin is located on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, and anchors 1,730 linear ft (527 m) of critical beach in the heart of Waikiki. The groin was originally constructed in 1927, and by 2012 was in very obvious need of replacement. Rock rubble mound breakwater and groin construction has been traditionally used in Hawaii, and is aesthetically the desired construction methodology for coastal structures. Oceanographic design parameters were based on a potential direct hurricane strike and likely future sea level rise. The groin design is a hybrid structure;the base is composed of armor stone, and the crest is made of cast-in-place fiber-reinforced concrete. The groin is also adaptable to sea level rise by permitting a relatively easy increase in the concrete crest cap elevation without the need for heavy equipment to dismantle and reconstruct the groin. Construction in normally densely crowded Waikiki was going to be difficult;however, when construction started in May 2020 Hawaii was in COVID-19 lockdown, the hotels were closed, and Waikiki was empty, with no one to be impacted by closed beach access or construction noise. © 2022 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Postal delivery disruptions and the fragility of voting by mail: Lessons from Maine

Since the onset in early 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, mail-in voting rates in states that have held elections have surged, presumably reflecting the fact that voting by mail is a relatively safe mode of ballot casting during a public health crisis. Matters of health notwithstanding, postal delivery disruptions can place mail-in ballots at risk of rejection on the grounds of lateness. With Maine as a case study, we show that, in the past four general elections, over 10% of vote-by-mail ballots arrived at local elections offices either on Election Day itself or one day earlier. Moreover, of the vote-by-mail ballots most vulnerable to postal delivery disruptions, a greater share of them were cast by unaffiliated voters and Democrats than by Republicans. Our results highlight the fragility of voting by mail in light of concerns about the reliability of the United States Postal Service. While existing research shows that the opportunity to vote by mail is neutral with respect to partisanship, our results highlight an aspect of mail-in balloting that nonetheless has a partisan hue—the extent to which vote-by-mail ballots are vulnerable to mail delays. © The Author(s) 2021.