The coastal zones all over the world are undergoing rapid development with growing and conflicting demands on the natural resources, and at the same time they are subject to often irreversible degradation of these resources and thus the very basis for development.
Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is the paradigm for the sustainable development of coastal regions, with a rich literature describing tools and approaches.

The approach to ICZM developed by ESS is based on a multi-sectoral integration of quantitative and qualitative analysis, combining field surveys using DIR type scientific diving for underwater exploration and field data collection. (where DIR very modestly stands for "doing it right") together with advanced tools of quantitative systems engineering using numerical

Quantitative tools and simulation models include

• LUC, a simulation model for (coastal) land use dynamics,
• 3D prognostic meteorological models: MM5 and WRF,
• state-of-the-art set of oceanographic and CFD tools:
  • ROMS/TOMS,
  • COHERENS,
  • the OpenFOAM Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) library.