Thoughts on large scale coastal behaviour

Large scale coastal behaviour (LSCB) deals with the development of coastal profiles and sediment budgets of a large coastal stretch (order tens of km's) over a considerable period of time (order decades). The knowledge of coastal behaviour at these scales is still very limited. Approaches to arrive at this knowledge are (in order of increasing complexity) the geostatistical, the phenomenological and the modelling approach. The main problems related to these approaches are: to give a proper description of the integrated temporal and areal developments of the coast; to determine the driving forces that govern LSCB, to schematize or parameterize the forces and relate them to these developments and finally to develop physically based models which describe adequately these developments. Possible solutions are suggested and limitations are discussed.