This blog post looks at the prediction techniques and design processes used by designers to safely design offshore plants even in extreme natural conditions.
Can we predict the next 1,000 years? Of course, it is very difficult, almost impossible, to accurately predict all the changes and events that will occur over the next 1,000 years. It is often difficult to even predict what will happen tomorrow. Although science and technology are advancing day by day, we are still not able to know the future accurately. However, there are people whose job is to predict the next 1,000 years. They are offshore plant designers.
Offshore plants refer to large-scale facilities that produce oil or gas from the sea. Recently, offshore oil fields have been receiving more attention due to the depletion of resources in onshore oil fields, and the role of offshore plants is becoming increasingly important. To produce all the resources from an offshore oil field, the offshore plant must be located on the sea and operate for at least 30 years. During this time, the offshore plant must withstand strong winds and rough waves, and minimize the impact of severe weather changes and the marine environment.
The amount of oil that offshore plants produce in a day is so vast that it amounts to trillions of won. The stability of offshore plants is directly linked to the profits of oil companies, and it is essential that they operate without interruption. If an offshore plant is interrupted due to an unexpected wave, the company will suffer astronomical losses. Therefore, it is very important to accurately predict the height of the waves that will occur in the environment where the offshore plant will be installed. The concept of design wave height is used in this case.
Offshore plant designers predict the maximum height of the waves that occur once every M years before designing. Here, M years refers to the probability of the wave occurring once every 100, 500, or 1,000 years. This prediction is an important factor in determining how long a facility can operate safely at sea. Offshore plants are usually designed to withstand the height of waves that occur once every 100 to 1,000 years. This depends on the requirements of the shipowner, and the design criteria are set differently for each project.
However, predicting design wave heights is not a simple task. Since humans lack the ability to predict the future, marine plant designers use historical data to predict the future. Historical weather patterns and observation records play an important role in this process. The process of obtaining design wave heights is like learning about the future through history. In other words, it is predicting the maximum height of waves that will occur in the future by analyzing records of waves that occurred in the past.
The specific method for obtaining the design wave height is as follows. First, the height and number of waves that occurred over a certain period of time in the area where the offshore plant will be installed are measured. Based on this, the probability of each wave height is calculated. For example, if a wave with a height of 12 m occurred 12 times out of 10,000 waves, the probability would be 0.0012. In this way, the probability of each wave occurrence can be calculated, and based on this, the height of the wave that comes once every 1,000 years can be estimated.
In the actual design process, predictions are not simply based on observed data. Various marine observation records accumulated over decades, climate models, and even AI technology are used to predict future weather changes. The unique environmental characteristics of the waters where the offshore plant will be installed are also taken into account. For example, extreme environments such as the Arctic Ocean are more likely to experience unusual waves and weather conditions that are not normally experienced, requiring more careful design.
This forecasting work by offshore plant designers is more than just design. If they fail to accurately predict the height of the waves, the plant could be severely damaged, which could lead to a serious environmental disaster such as an oil spill. It could also cause a major shock to the global economy due to a lack of stable marine resources. Therefore, their efforts to predict 1,000 years are not simply for the benefit of the company, but are closely linked to the future of the planet.
Ultimately, the role of offshore plant designers is to prepare for extreme situations that may occur once in a thousand years. Without their thorough prediction and preparation, the development of offshore resources would have been much slower, and as a result, we may have faced crises such as energy shortages sooner.
