Individuals working in coastal management either for local or national  government or for a commercial consultancy company could find the results from many of the ELOISE projects of direct relevance to work they are undertaking or propose. However, it is often difficult to determine how the results from a particular project may relate to practical work carried out in a different situation in a different location with all the real life pressures and constraints. This website is designed to do two things:

1. to make it easier to access the information generated by recent research projects.
2. to try to make the relationship between the research and its practical application clearer.

The organisation

There are three levels of information for each of the four general topics (see diagram below). Firstly, there are executive summaries which describe the key features of the research carried out in each topic area. Secondly, there are the full syntheses, documents which describe what the different projects in each area studied and how their findings were of relevance to developing our understanding coastal systems. These syntheses are broken up into short sections through which it is easy to navigate. We have also compiled relevant figures and tables from these documents into outline powerpoint presentations. In association with each of these syntheses there are case studies which explore examples in more detail. Thirdly, there are hyperlinks to the project websites and references published in the literature where the most detailed information about the studies can be found.

This material can be used in two different ways – either to provide information on a particular topic or subject of immediate concern to the user or as a way to keep up to date on a particular topic. In either case it is suggested that the executive summaries should be read first and that the site map should be visited. The executive summaries provide an overview of the topics considered which may encourage you to read an entire synthesis document or may help you to identify particular sections or chapters of interest.

The second stage is to read in detail the synthesis reports. When reading the synthesis reports many links to projects and publications will be seen and if more information is required that is the route through which it can be obtained. Many of the journal articles are also available freely through the weblinks within the text but this is not always the case and sometimes you will find the abstract of the paper is available but for the full paper there will be a charge. The powerpoint presentations are less likely to be of use to coastal managers (although they contain some very good images which may be of use in presentations) but the case studies may be of genuine interest.

Most of the material can be traced to the authors and/or the institution responsible via the links to websites which many of the projects maintain. Where the project acronym is not highlighted there is no website available.