As climate change accelerates sea-level rise and intensifies storm impacts, a new scientific review by Dr Avidesh Seenath, ECI, is raising serious concerns about the outdated models still widely used to predict shoreline change — and the billions spent based on their flawed assumptions.
Riviera Beach, Constanța in Romania
For decades, coastal managers and governments have relied on two foundational shoreline models — the “one-line theory” and the “Bruun Rule” — to guide long-term decisions about beach erosion, infrastructure placement, and adaptation strategies. But according to a recent study, these models drastically oversimplify the complex and dynamic processes shaping our coastlines, leading to unreliable predictions.
Dr Seenath, Departmental Lecturer and Course Director, MSc in Environmental Change and Management at the ECI, said:
The reality is that we’re still using tools built in the 1950s and ’60s to make billion-dollar decisions about the future of our coasts. That’s a dangerous gamble in an era of rapidly changing climate conditions.”
While newer “hybrid” models have emerged, the study finds that many still inherit the same flawed assumptions — particularly around sediment transport and sea-level rise — that limit their ability to capture the real behaviour of coastal systems. These limitations are especially critical for vulnerable areas like small island states and developing coastal regions, which often lack high-quality data and are at the forefront of climate impacts.
The study calls for a major shift in how we approach shoreline modelling, including the adoption of high-resolution data, dynamic process simulations, and probabilistic forecasting that accounts for uncertainty. Without such change, experts warn, we risk mismanaging some of the world’s most at-risk coastlines.
Read the full study in Nature Water: Fundamental limitations of shoreline models