The concept and application of resilience have been significantly expanded in the last three decades and the term is being used more and more broadly to represent a large-scale multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach to both natural and human-related coastal issues associated with rising sea level, increased storm frequency and intensity, and human stressors. This chapter reviews the relevant findings from the recent global climate-change reports and introduces the resilience of barrier–inlet systems. In terms of the natural system, the survival of the very landform under the condition of accelerating sea-level rise is discussed via a conceptual model or a couple of numerical models. The resiliency of the human–natural barrier–inlet environment is far more complicated than just the natural system. The concepts and complicated framework outlined in the recent NRC (National Research Council) and USGCRP (US Global Climate Research Program) reports are reviewed, and illustrated with two case studies.

At a regional scale, the state of the coast can be understood from a sediment budget point of view. For example, accretion occurs when more sand is transported into the system than is being transported out, while erosion occurs when more sand is leaving the system than coming in. Therefore, shore protection or stabilization can be achieved by balancing the sediment budget at an adequate spatial and temporal scale. However, the practice of balancing a sediment budget at a regional scale is quite complicated and has not been broadly applied till the recent 20 years. This chapter discusses the formulation of a regional sediment budget at beach–inlet systems. The inlet reservoir model, which accounts for temporal evolution of sediment volume at an ebb tidal delta, is discussed. At a local scale, sediment bypassing or backpassing and inlet channel dredging are often conducted, and these methods are reviewed in the context of regional sediment management.