Bivariate Analysis of Extreme Wave and Storm Surge Events. Determining the Failure Area of Structures

Abstract

In the present paper a bivariate process of extreme waves and storm surges at a Dutch station on the North Sea is considered. A bivariate logistic model and a sequential estimation procedure are used to extract joint exceedance prob-abilities of the two variables. The parameters of the margins of the bivariate distribution are defined by three different methods of estimation: a) the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) approach, b) a Bayesian procedure with flat prior distributions and c) the L-Moments (LM) estimation procedure. Comparison of the results of the three methods is per-formed and general conclusions are extracted. An approach to estimate the failure area of a particular structure under ex-treme sea conditions is presented, using the margins resulting from the three different estimation methods.