In the field of coastal engineering, so far the wave hindcasting has been executed for several limited purposes such as the clarification of the cause of the disaster due to waves, the interpolation of missing wave observation data and the determination of design wave conditions for maritime structures since the wave hindcasting was usually expensive and special knowledge was sometimes required to the executions. Recently, the wave hindcasting models have been improved as seen in the successful development of the third generation wave models such as WAM, SWAN and Wave Watch III. In addition, accurate and reliable meteorological data for several decades has been supplied from the international organizations such as ECMWF and NCEP. Thus the simulation of ocean waves with those wave models and meteorological data for the past of tens of years becomes easier. The accurate and reliable wave information can be obtained for long term in various coastal areas where there is no wave observation data. In this paper, we introduce the recent situation concerning the wave hindcasting models and their applications.
