A novel method for prediction of extreme wind speeds across parts of Southern Norway

Abstract

The paper describes a novel structural reliability method, particularly suitable for multi-dimensional environmental systems, either measured or numerically simulated over a sufficient period, resulting in sufficiently long ergodic time series. This study illustrates the efficiency of the proposed methodology by applying it to predict extreme wind speeds of a group of selected measured sites in Southern Norway in the region near the Landvik wind station. It is well known that wind speeds at different locations are highly non-linear, multi-dimensional and cross-correlated dynamic environmental responses, which can be challenging to analyse accurately. Unlike other environmental reliability methods, the new method does not require restarting the simulation each time the system fails, e.g., in the case of numerical simulation. In the case of measured environmental system response, an accurate prediction of system failure probability is also possible, as illustrated in this study. Moreover, in contrast to classical reliability methods, the proposed method can handle systems with high dimensionality and cross-correlation between the different dimensions.