Towards the identification of warning criteria: Analysis of a ship accident database

A ship that founders presents a great disaster both from an economical and a human point of view. It is therefore of concern to meteorological centers to include sea state related parameters in marine weather forecasts when they exceed a certain threshold. At present a standardized warning system is not set up yet. To contribute towards the definition of adequate warning criteria, an investigation was undertaken of ship accidents reported as being due to bad weather. Sea state related parameters (i.e. meteorological centers' standard wave products) at the time of 270 accidents were analyzed and compared to known ship characteristics. In order to estimate a certain degree of severity, results were compared to wave climate variation. In particular the use of quantiles seemed to provide a reasonable description of dangerous seas.