Estimation of storm peak and intra-storm directional-seasonal design conditions in the North Sea

Feld, G. and Randell, D. and Wu, Y. and Ewans, K. and Jonathan, P. (2014) Estimation of storm peak and intra-storm directional-seasonal design conditions in the North Sea. In: ASME 2014 33rd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering : Volume 4A: Structures, Safety and Reliability. ASME. ISBN 9780791845424

Abstract

Specification of realistic environmental design conditions for marine structures is of fundamental importance to their reliability over time. Design conditions for extreme waves and storm severities are typically estimated by extreme value analysis of time series of measured or hindcast significant wave height, HS. This analysis is complicated by two effects. Firstly, HS exhibits temporal dependence. Secondly, the characteristics of HS sp are non-stationary with respect to multiple covariates, particularly wave direction and season. We develop directional-seasonal design values for storm peak significant wave height (HS sp) by estimation of, and simulation under a non-stationary extreme value model for HS sp. Design values for significant wave height (HS) are estimated by simulating storm trajectories of HS consistent with the simulated storm peak events. Design distributions for individual maximum wave height (Hmax) are estimated by marginalisation using the known conditional distribution for Hmax given HS. Particular attention is paid to the assessment of model bias and quantification of model parameter and design value uncertainty using bootstrap resampling. We also outline existing work on extension to estimation of maximum crest elevation and total extreme water level. Copyright © 2014 by ASME.