Advances in Morphodynamics of Coasts and Lagoons

Coastal evolution due to natural and human-induced causes or factors can be rather variable on quite different temporal and/or spatial scales. Our capability to understand and especially predict this variability on the longer time scales is still limited. This can lead to misinterpretation of coastal change information, which hampers informed decision-making and the subsequent functional design process related to (soft) engineering interventions. Research progress aimed at understanding observations of long-term coastal evolution is important to support and improve the decision-making and functional design process. In this contribution an attempt is made to review recent research methodological advances and to illustrate the concept with one exemplary result.