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Sandy beaches comprise approximately 31% of the world's ice-free coasts. Sandy coastlines around the world are continuously adjusting in response to changing waves and water levels at both short (storm) and long (climate-driven, from El-Nino Southern Oscillation to sea level rise) timescales. Managing this critical zone requires robust, advanced tools that represent our best understanding of how to abstract and integrate coastal processes. However, this has been hindered by (1) a lack of long-term, large-scale coastal monitoring of sandy beaches and (2) a robust understanding of the key physical processes that drive shoreline change over multiple timescales. This perspectives article aims to summarize the current state of shoreline modeling at the sub-century timescale and provides an outlook on future challenges and opportunities ahead.

The slope of the beach face is a critical parameter for coastal scientists and engineers studying sandy coastlines. However, despite its importance for coastal applications (engineering formulations, coastal flood modelling, swimming safety), it remains extremely difficult to obtain reliable estimates of the beachface slope over large spatial scales (hundreds to thousands of km of coastline). This presentation describes a new method to estimate the beach-face slope exclusively from space-borne observations: shoreline positions derived from publicly available optical imaging satellites and tide heights from satellite altimetry. This new technique is first validated against field measurements and then applied across hundreds of beaches in eastern Australia and California, USA (data available at http://coastsat.wrl.unsw.edu.au/).Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/U9zMbFX4gPk

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