The design loads on rubble mound breakwaters are almmost entirely determined by the environmental conditions, i.e. sea state, water levels, sea bed characteristics, etc.
It is the objective of sub-group B to identify the most important environmental parameters and evaluate the related uncertainties including those corresponding to extreme estimates typically used for design purposes.
Basically a design condition is made up of a set of parameter values stemming from several environmental parameters. To be able to evaluate the uncertainty related to design states one must know the corresponding joint probability density function (j.p.d.f.). However, the j.p.d.f.”s are in general site specific and very few examples exist where the necessary intensive investigations to establish such functions have been performed. Moreover, a general theoretical treatment of the problem is mathematically complicated.
Consequently this report deals mainly with each parameter separately. Multi parameter problems are briefly discussed in section 9.
It is important to notice that the quantified uncertainties reported in section 7.7 represent what might be regarded as typical figures to be used only when no more qualified information is available.
