Weathering the storm: How OR steered a course between extreme statistics and offshore design

In many instances the role of the OR scientist is to provide access to practitioners, be they management or engineers, to sophisticated quantitative techniques. This case illustrates such a situation where the OR scientists were able to use some of the latest developments in extreme value statistics to provide estimates of the worst conditions likely to be encountered in the offshore environment. These extremes could then be used by marine engineers to form the basis for their designs for offshore structures.