Coastal engineering is one of the many inter-disciplinary fields of professional study and practice which has appeared in recent years on the periphery of the traditional fields; civil engineers, oceanographers, mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, petroleum production engineers and many others participate to some degree in this field which has as its common denominator the phenomena and the physical design problems of the zone where land and ocean meet. The Coastal Engineering Council, formerly the Council on Wave Research of the Engineering Foundation, was organized to promote research and to provide a medium of communication among workers in the field. It became evident after the first conference at Long Beach in 1950 that research in progress was extensive and reasonably well-supported and that the most effective function of the Council would be to sponsor occasional conferences in countries active in coastal studies. The proceedings of these conferences, ably edited by our Secretary, Professor J. W. Johnson, form an encyclopedia of theory, laboratory studies, field observations, design methods, case histories in coastal morphology, and in the lore and knowledge characteristic of an active phase of engineering practice, in which judgment based upon experience plays as large a role in design as theory. All of us who practice in this area owe Professor Johnson much gratitude for his incisive editorial work and his skillful financial management which has made these proceedings so readily available.
CLIMATE CHANGE KEY-CHALLENGES IN COASTAL ENGINEERING
