As an introduction to this thematic issue on “Modelling approaches in sedimentology”, this paper gives an overview of the workshop held in Paris on 7 November 2013 during the 14th Congress of the French Association of Sedimentologists. A synthesis of the workshop in terms of concepts, spatial and temporal scales, constraining data, and scientific challenges is first presented, then a discussion on the possibility of coupling different models, the industrial needs, and the new potential domains of research is exposed.