The first of the two briefings in this issue concerns the EU water framework directive (WFD; Brooke, 2012; EC, 2000). This not only updates us on more recent developments since the last briefing on this topic in 2007 (Brooke, 2007 but also provides a broader context, shedding some light on how the WFD interacts and links with other directives such as the EU floods (EC, 2007), habitats (EC, 2009) and marine strategy (EC, 2008) directives. This provides a useful starting point for those working on the coast, or in estuaries, and trying to sort out how evolving policy and regulation is likely to influence future development opportunities.A year ago we published a briefing of the 2010 UK Young Coastal Scientists and Engineers Conference, held at University College London, as a set of short abstracts (Simons et al., 2011). There was another exciting mix of papers at last year's conference, which was held at the National Oceanographic Centre, Liverpool, and we are glad once again to provide a selection of the best abstracts from the conference (Brown et al., 2012). The keynote lecture, given by Tim Chesher, and six presentations judged by the organising committee to be of particular merit are combined and presented in this issue. The keynote lecture provided the students with some valuable insights into the use and abuse of numerical models. There was then a wide-ranging mix of papers covering important coastal-management issues, such as the impacts of demersal fishing and the blow-out of sand dunes, and a number of papers on various aspects of modelling including wave run-up, bedform migration and sediment transport at a range of scales.The first paper in this issue is about the recently completed coast-protection scheme in Blackpool (Cunningham et al., 2012), one of the largest coastal defence projects completed in the UK over the past 10 years. This paper is welcome because it reflects on a completed scheme, documenting the lessons learnt. In doing so it highlights the breadth of issues that now have to be considered when developing coastal defences, particularly in urban environments. As an important tourist destination the scheme had to deliver significantly improved coastal defences, while maximising public amenity, which added a number of additional constraints to the design process. What is particularly nice about this scheme is that it takes full advantage of a major infrastructure investment to secure benefits across a wide range of requirements, not least aesthetic quality and public utility. The authors highlight the importance of partnering with a range of stakeholders in the delivery of this type of project.The second paper continues the theme of scour, which was the main focus of the last issue of Maritime Engineering (Harris and Whitehouse, 2011). The paper by Guven et al. (2012) considers methods to predict wave-induced scour around piles, an issue that was also touched on in the themed issue looking at offshore renewable energy (Prandle, 2009). As well as the practical interest in the subject o...

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Advances often go in waves and this is a dominant theme of this issue. In a literal sense, two of the papers are about developments in wave modelling techniques. However, I use the word in the more general context of the working paradigm that most of us follow, whether knowingly or not, at any point in time. Ilya Prigogine, was a chemist and Nobel Laureate who advanced our understanding of time, complexity and the importance of open, non-linear systems. Such systems give rise to self-organisation and dissipative structures, which can be observed as the basis of life in the natural world we see around us. As such, Prigogine was instrumental in opening up a new paradigm but he was also acutely aware that our scientific (and engineering) horizon is itself conditioned by the cultural outlook of our times (Prigogine and Stengers, 1985). This is not just a matter of the state of current knowledge and technology. It runs much deeper and depends on the constraints imposed by our respective languages, cultural heritage and our metaphysical mind sets (to see this, simply compare some of the fundamental differences in outlook between Eastern and Western cultures).Within this broader context of the governing paradigm, advances occasionally come about by major changes in direction (think of Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein) but most of our advances are incremental in character. However, this is not a linear process and tends to see surges at intervals, as new capabilities become available. In my lifetime this has been and continues to be hugely influenced by our technological capability. Before the advent of the computer, the analytical solution was dominant and even today remains a powerful means of developing a basic understanding of a problem. However, the power of the computer has opened up new horizons, initially by allowing larger problems to be solved but progressively through the introduction of new techniques that take advantage of such computational power. We have seen not only traditional differential/integral formulations (that could not be solved analytically) now being solved with ever greater sophistication but also the use of simple rules applied recursively in the form of cellular automata, genetic algorithms and neural networks.The development of a range of models to represent processes in our oceans, seas, coast and estuaries means we now have a panoply of models available to us. One of the current initiatives being pushed forward by a number of groups is to make better use of what we already have. This entails sharing existing developments (see for example: http://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/ Main_Page) and linking models rather than simply building bigger and bigger models which become increasingly difficult to maintain (see for example: http://www.openmi.org/reloaded/). In parallel, our ability to observe and measure the properties of the world around us has also moved on apace. Not only do we have much more detailed data (e.g. from remote sensing) but also the access to large integrated data sets is changin...

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