One Criterion to Rule Them All

In the early 2000s, there was discussion about movement away from 'safety standard' design in coastal engineering towards reliability based design (Hans Burcharth & Hosine Oumeraci are two authors). However, what seemed to be the *ahem* new wave in coastal engineering has not transitioned into policy application. In some cases, we have moved in the opposite direction, where policy -based standardisation has reduced design complexity. Implications of this practice should be understood...

Perhaps an important aside, and recognition of the counter-pull... a major driver towards simple criteria is the use of complexity by engineers and scientists to obscure (hide) understanding of risk. If complexity is misused, it does tend to get stripped away...

A simple example of the implications of using a single criterion:

If the same criterion for initiation of damage (e.g. 100-yr ARI) is used for two locations with different flood risk (or wave) climate, then recurrence of failure is more frequent for a location with a 'steep climate'. This brings with it a higher residual risk - which can create a very different level of economic performance.