Return Value Estimation of Significant Wave Heights With Maximum Entropy Distribution

Abstract

The maximum entropy distribution is proposed to fit the long term and extreme distribution of significant wave heights from which return value estimates are derived. The maximum entropy distribution is applied to data from two sites of different characteristics, namely from Japan characterized by the occurrence of typhoons and from the North Sea with continuous variation of sea state intensity. The compound distribution, Poisson-maximum entropy distribution, is described and adopted to model the data from these two locations. It is shown that in the case of continuous data from the North Sea, this model does not bring any advantage over the direct application of the maximum entropy distribution to adjust the significant wave heights larger than different thresholds. For this case the maximum entropy distribution provides good fits.