Application of a multi-layer approach for morphological modelling

For national decisions regarding coastal management it is important to understand the long-term effects and large-scale implications of both natural processes such as climate-change sea-level rise and major coastal engineering projects such as large-scale land reclamations To this purpose, within the framework of the national Dutch research program "COAST*2000", a behaviour-oriented model is being developed that is basically capable of quantifying the long-term (50 to 100 years) and large-scale (1-100 km) morphological evolution of the Dutch coast. The set-up of this so-called PONTOS-model is discussed in this paper, focusing on the definition of the model, its validation and the preliminary results of some applications.