Estimates of hurricane wind speeds by the 'peaks over threshold' method

Abstract

We report results that lend support to the hypothesis that extreme hurricane wind speeds are described predominantly by reverse Weibull distributions, which have limited upper tails. The results are based on the analysis of hurricane wind speed data obtained in an earlier project and used for the development of the ASCE 7-83 and ASCE 7-93 Standard wind speed map. According to our results, wind load factors should be larger in hurricane-prone regions than the load factor specified in current standard provisions. However, the requisite increases are smaller than would be the case if the distributions were assumed to have infinite upper tails, as has been done so far in all principal studies of hurricane winds in the United States.

Generation characteristics of fungal spore and fragment bioaerosols by airflow control over fungal cultures

“…To simulate the environmental aerosolization of fungal particles into the air, we designed a new generator that uses airflow as a major dispersal principle. Especially, we suspected that fungal cultures are occasionally exposed to strong winds from sources such as typhoons or hurricanes (which feature air velocities of 40-50 m/s, (Heckert, Simiu, & Whalen, 1998;Ou, Liau, Hsu, & Tzang, 2002) and the moving vehicles (over 30 m/s), therefore we designed and operated an experimental apparatus to include such conditions. In previous studies of fungal bioaerosol generators, airflow in the generators descended vertically onto the culture plates from holes in the top of the generator, impacting the culture perpendicularly as it passed over the plate (Jung, Lee C.H.…”

Forecasting US insured hurricane losses

“…Probability estimates of extreme hurricanes are available in the literature (Darling, 1991;Rupp and Lander, 1996;Heckert et al, 1998;Chu and Wang, 1998), but these studies do not address the question of how hurricane probabilities change with climate. This is done in Jagger et al (2001), but the focus is on the probability of hurricanes of any intensity and not on the probability of the most extreme winds.…”

The application of automated image analysis to dense heterogeneities in partially sintered alumina

“…24 Dargahi-Noubary recommends GPD for use as the distribution of the excess of observed values over a certain threshold, as the threshold increases toward the right hand tail. 25 The GPD is a flexible and widely applied limit distribution that has been applied to modeling high risks in financial markets, 26 earthquake magnitudes, 27 heavy winds, 25,28,29 floods, 24 particle size distributions, 30 and maximum inclusion size in clean steels, [31][32][33][34] to name only a few examples. Gilli and Kellezi have provided detailed information on the GPD, 26 from which Eqs.…”

“…[27][28][29] If there is theoretical or scientific evidence that there is a certain upper bound for x, then ξ < 0 is used, else ξ > 0 is used for applications where there is no knowledge or evidence about the upper limit. Eqs.…”