Hurricanes are one of the biggest threats to offshore platform integrity and personnel security in the Gulf of Mexico. In hurricane-dominated regions, history of extreme events at a determined location, like an offshore platform, are often too scarce for a direct Extreme Value Analysis (EVA). Extreme Value Analysis being essential for structural design, it is necessary to explore new methodologies. The spatial method presented in this article is based on the Regional Frequency Analysis (RFA), adapted to hurricane-generated sea states. The goal is to increase the size of the sample of extreme events considered for a given location, to ensure a more reliable view of the distribution of very extreme events. For a concrete application, a hindcast dataset of significant wave height over the Gulf of Mexico is decomposed into homogeneous regions where distinct locations show similar hurricane impacts. The identification of these homogeneous regions is performed by applying the Ward hierarchical clustering method on peaks of significant wave heights generated by hurricanes.
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