i will review a general framework for developing numerical methods working with non-parametrically defined surfaces for various problems involving. the main idea is to formulate appropriate extensions of a given problem defined on a surface to ones in the narrow band of the surface in the embedding space. the extensions are arranged so that the solutions to the extended problems are equivalent, in a strong sense, to the surface problems that we set out to solve. such extension approaches allow us to analyze the well-posedness of the resulting system, develop, systematically and in a unified fashion, numerical schemes for treating a wide range of problems involving differential and integral operators, and deal with similar problems in which only point clouds sampling the surfaces are given.