Consequences of Wave Climate Change for Tanker Design

The need to improve the availability, quality, and reliability of environmental databases (mainly wind and wave data for ships) has been identified by various international professional organisations (e.g. ISSC, 2009) as well as Classification Societies. Several studies have attempted to quantify the uncertainties due to insufficient knowledge of the wave climate (e.g. Bitner-Gregersen and Guedes Soares, 2007) resulting in differences in long-term ship responses of up to 150 % of a nominal value, e.g. Guedes Soares and Trovao (1991), Bitner-Gregersen et al. (1995a). This high uncertainty may lead to overdesign/underdesign of ships, with consequent significant economic/risk impact.