Quantification and propagation of meteorological and oceanographic uncertainties in offshore engineering

Safe design and operations in offshore engineering depend on quantification of the effects of meteorological and oceanographic (metocean) forcings on structures. These forcings have inherent spatio-temporal variabilities, generating uncertainty in structural response estimates. This thesis develops approaches for the quantification and propagation of metocean uncertainty in offshore engineering. There are two research objectives: firstly, to quantify unknown metocean inputs when little, or no, data are available; and secondly, to propagate uncertain metocean inputs in near-real time through computationally expensive numerical simulations of an offshore structure's response. Each objective is discussed with application to a Floating Production Storage Offloading vessel.