Professor Ian Townend is Visiting Professor within Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. Research Director at HR Wallingford with responsibility for the technical direction of the research agenda across the organisation. I previously spent 13 years as Managing Director of ABPmer and 18 years as a consultant with Sir William Halcrow & Partners. My own work is largely related to estuary and coastal systems and involves a wide range of interests including hydraulics, sediment transport, and geomorphology, as well as the associated habitats and ecosystems. My main research interest is currently the dynamic response of these systems to change. I have worked on a wide range of coastal and marine studies in the UK and overseas. This has included: directing the UK’s first climate change risk assessment for government; acting as an expert witness for a number of major development Inquiries, developing and contributing to the UK estuary research programme; piloting of the application of risk methods to examine coastal flooding at a national scale for the insurance industry; and leading one of the first regional scale coastal studies in the UK that helped frame the subsequent development of Shoreline Management Plans.