Extreme Value Analysis of a Large Designed Experiment: A Case Study in Bulk Carrier Safety

The bulk carrier M.V. Derbyshire sank in 1980 when she encountered a typhoon near Japan. The most likely cause of her loss was finally explained in the report of the Re-opened Formal Investigation in 2000. The report also revealed inadequacies in safety standards for such vessels, particularly concerning regulations governing hatch cover strengths, and requested further work be undertaken to examine the sufficiency of aspects of the existing international standards for ship design. This paper describes the extreme value analysis of data from a large designed experiment intended to aid the revision of these safety standards. We highlight the importance of consistency of results over the different conditions examined, and how this can be achieved using various data pooling and regression techniques.