Strong winds in South Africa, part 1: application of estimation methods

Abstract

The accurate estimation of strong winds is of cardinal importance to the built environment, particularly in South Africa, where wind loading represents the dominant environmental action to be considered in the design of structures. While the Gumbel method remains the most popular applied method to estimate strong wind quantiles, several factors should influence the consideration of alternative approaches. In South Africa, the most important factors influencing the choice of method are the mixed strong wind climate and the lengths of available wind measurement records. In addition, the time-scale of the estimations (in this case one hour and 2–3 seconds) influences the suitability of some methods. The strong wind climate is dominated by synoptic scale disturbances along the coast and adjacent interior, and mesoscale systems, i.e. thunderstorms, in the biggest part of the interior. However, in a large part of South Africa more than one mechanism plays a significant role in the development of strong winds. For these regions the application of a mixed-climate approach is recommended as more appropriate than the Gumbel method. In South Africa, reliable wind records are in most cases shorter than 20 years, which makes the application of a method developed for short time series advisable. In addition it is also recommended that the shape parameter be set to zero, which translates to the Gumbel method when only annual maxima are employed. In the case of the Peak-Over-Threshold (POT) method, one of several methods developed for short time series, the application of the Exponential Distribution instead of the Generalised Pareto Distribution is recommended. However, the POT method is not suitable for estimations over longer time scales, e.g. one hour averaging, due to the high volumes of dependent strong wind values in the data sets to be utilised. The results of an updated assessment, or the present strong wind records reported in this paper, serve as input to revised strong wind maps, as presented in the accompanying paper.