Deriving the 100-Year Total Water Level around the Coast of Corsica by Combining Trivariate Extreme Value Analysis and Coastal Hydrodynamic Models

As low-lying coastal areas can be impacted by flooding caused by dynamic components that are dependent on each other (wind, waves, water levels—tide, atmospheric surge, currents), the analysis of the return period of a single component is not representative of the return period of the total water level at the coast. It is important to assess a joint return period of all the components. Based on a semiparametric multivariate extreme value analysis, we determined the joint probabilities that significant wave heights (Hs), wind intensity at 10 m above the ground (U), and still water level (SWL) exceeded jointly imposed thresholds all along the Corsica Island coasts (Mediterranean Sea). We also considered the covariate peak direction (Dp), the peak period (Tp), and the wind direction (Du). Here, we focus on providing extreme scenarios to populate coastal hydrodynamic models, SWAN and SWASH-2DH, in order to compute the 100-year total water level (100y-TWL) all along the coasts. We show how the proposed multivariate extreme value analysis can help to more accurately define low-lying zones potentially exposed to coastal flooding, especially in Corsica where a unique value of 2 m was taken into account in previous studies. The computed 100y-TWL values are between 1 m along the eastern coasts and a maximum of 1.8 m on the western coast. The calculated values are also below the 2.4 m threshold recommended when considering the sea level rise (SLR). This highlights the added value of performing a full integration of extreme offshore conditions, together with their dependence on hydrodynamic simulations for screening out the coastal areas potentially exposed to flooding.

Determining the dependence structure of multivariate extremes

Summary In multivariate extreme value analysis, the nature of the extremal dependence between variables should be considered when selecting appropriate statistical models. Interest often lies in determining which subsets of variables can take their largest values simultaneously while the others are of smaller order. Our approach to this problem exploits hidden regular variation properties on a collection of nonstandard cones, and provides a new set of indices that reveal aspects of the extremal dependence structure not available through existing measures of dependence. We derive theoretical properties of these indices, demonstrate their utility through a series of examples, and develop methods of inference that also estimate the proportion of extremal mass associated with each cone. We apply the methods to river flows in the U.K., estimating the probabilities of different subsets of sites being large simultaneously.